


purple rain

by fondleeds



Category: One Direction
Genre: Blood and Gore, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, Slow Burn, Thriller, Zombie Apocalypse, basically just buckle your seatbelts and hold on tight folks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-03-23 13:00:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 54,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13788279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fondleeds/pseuds/fondleeds
Summary: “I’ve got the same,” Harry says, pointer finger moving up and down in lazy, little lines as he talks. “In my notebook, I cross off each day. Write something down.”“And what happens when you run out of pages?” Louis says, a little snarkier than he means it to be, slipping the matchbox closed. He can feel his ribs constricting, curling in to protect his chest.“Well,” Harry says softly, looking out to the emptiness, to the dry, dead earth. “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”-AU. It's the end of the world.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> heeeey welcome to the fic i never thought i'd end up writing ever
> 
> sooo this is still a wip but here's the current situation: i have four wips sitting at 40k words each, and because i'm dumb and busy and dealing with life, i haven't managed to finish any of them. buT, i'm halfway through this one and kinda optimistic that i can smash through the last half during my uni break in a few months. so, as it is:
> 
> hey!! this idea popped into my head months and months ago and it's kinda something i never thought i'd be able to pull off because it's really different to anything i've written before, but once i started thinking about it more and more the true possibilities of the Angst opportunities were released and, well. y'all know angst is my life source. 
> 
> please do note the tags and if you are squeamish with blood and those sort of graphic descriptions of injury this is just a forewarning that this fic is going to be messy and confronting at times, especially in later chapters, so just a warning with that!! 
> 
> psa i've never seen the walking dead or anything like that so everything zombie-wise will be explained in the fic!! i'm really excited to share this and i hope i can get my shit together and finish it (and all my other wips rip) very soon. 
> 
> kickass playlist [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/gonewilde/playlist/6J1Ai4aG9sxa5C6FZsx5Md?si=0oPrl9XXRjCM6paZJEE9DA) for those of you who wanna jam ((and cry))
> 
> hope u like!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

In the eerie silence of morning, the only whisper is the shrill, distant whistle of wind warping around the silhouettes of the plateaus, the dry rustle of red dirt scraping along cracked pavement. The horizon and the land meet as one, blood red and shadowed by bronze, shattered gold splintering up and fuzzing the deep purples that still hug the atmosphere, black on it’s way to turning blue, clawing at the last strips of darkness. Every shadow is slanted, pressed flat against the ground with heads ducked down, shying away from the rising sun, an attempt to bury back underground where it’s cool and dark, easy to hide. 

Louis slides the matchbox in his fingers open slowly, feels the soft edges under his calluses, the lone, stale cigarette rolling across the cardboard with an inaudible _thunk_. With the edge of his stanley knife, he scratches in a small line, careful not to push through to the other side, and watches the old carton fray under the tip of his blade, another tiny mark among the hundreds. A majority of them are in pen, different coloured pencils. His are all scratched straight into the box. 

The window he’s looking out of is shattered and jagged and the sun is already blaring, the last furnace blasts of summer exploding through the air. It’s hard to breathe, and when the wind picks up his eyes water, gritty and dry. Dust grates against the glass and settles itself on the window pane, rough and grainy when he touches. The street is littered with rubbish and ransacked trucks, old military four-wheelers overturned, glass sprinkled like rain. The insides of storefronts spill over onto the road like a rogue wave has hit from the inside, washing it all down the street, decayed and rotting away. 

Daisy is asleep on his lap, head pillowed against his thighs, the soft waves of her hair gone fluffy and wild, falling from her week old braids. Her arms are curled around her stomach, the knobs of her elbows grazed and dirty, dusted red up along the outsides of her biceps from sunburn, the nubs of her bony wrists kissed bright gold. There’s a paleness to her face, though, and she shifts in her sleep, fingers digging into her sides. They haven’t eaten properly for weeks, now.

The bedroom they’ve hidden themselves away in used to be a child’s. It’s mostly empty now, ransacked and stripped bare, but the cracked walls are still painted in pastel blues, there’s still a torn _Adventure Time_ poster hanging, books spilling from the wonky shelves in bright colour. The bed has no mattress, and Leigh-Anne is asleep on the slats of the frame, arms lined with odd little indents when she turns from being pressed up against the gaps. They didn’t talk about the splatters of blood on the floor, on the shattered mirror of the wardrobe, when they’d set their things down. Louis barely notices the small things like that, now. 

He blinks slowly as he looks outside, lids heavy. It’s not even supposed to be his watch, but he still can’t sleep, can’t close his eyes without seeing everything playing back like someone is pressing rewind on his mind. Niall is asleep in the corner, or pretending to be, picking absently at the loose skin of his forefinger, pinching and tugging it between this thumb and middle finger without realising he’s doing it, face carefully slack. Louis watches him for a moment, and is thankful that he doesn’t sit up and force Louis to bed, fretting his fingers over his cheeks like the first few days after. 

As the sun rises, it seems almost like an equilibrium for his stomach to sink in turn, keeping balance. He fucked up by coming here. He knows it, and that thought hasn’t left him since they fled California. His shotgun is leant up against the window frame beside him, just three bullets left, and he stares down at it when the glare becomes too much. The town they’re in is somewhere north-west of Phoenix, isolated enough from the big city that they haven’t run into trouble yet, but almost bridging on the point of being too far gone, where there really is nothing left to scrounge for. It had been impulse and rashness that brought him here, and now anxiety has settled in the back of his mind, drifting over his figure like a shadow, because they need to get out, and quickly. 

During those first few weeks, what seems like lifetimes ago now, panic had always seemed like the worst part of it. It’s not. It’s after, waiting for death, knowing that it lingers on the edge of every sense. He smells rotting flesh and fire the moment the sun rises each morning, hears the distant gurgle of a throat clogged with infection carried on every breeze, sees every shadow in the dark as a monster, feels every touch as a repressed memory from before everything went bad. The worst part is when the panic becomes so familiar it’s no longer panic. It becomes a part of a person. 

That part of him is wide awake now, tapping its long, spindly nails against the surface of his skull in a dull, rhythmic _tick-tick-tick._

-

Louis has learned the hard way that the basics of the human condition are shattered when the world is falling apart. Compassion doesn’t exist in the aftermath, sympathy is flipped into snarling cruelty. There is no sticking together, no large groups travelling in packs, loaded with supplies and trucks, silver knights of the apocalypse. There’s only looting and robbing, attacks in the dark when you think you’re safe twined with a group of twenty, until you wake up alone with nothing, bleeding and afraid, broken remains among an already smashed thing. He has no place to judge, though. The knife in his pocket didn’t come easy. The extra bag of supplies they picked up that one time on the coast wasn’t theirs without split open knuckles and guilty conscience. 

But he has this now, something like a family. People he does trust his life with, trusts Daisy’s life with, more importantly. She wouldn’t be alive without Leigh-Anne and Niall. 

Louis and Leigh-Anne are walking silently through town now, sweating under the Arizona summer. Niall is still with Daisy, locked up in the house with his rifle aimed out the window, watching their shadows disappear behind the rubble and mountains of rubbish. Louis really has no idea where they are, how far out of California they’d gotten before he’d snapped out of it and almost driven them off the road, how far into the state they’ve trapped themselves in. They still haven’t found gas. 

In the beginning, they’d been warned against the big cities. _Get out, get out now. Go south. Find desert. Find forest. Isolate. Stay away from the plants, get off the grid_. The traffic had been so banked up that anyone on the road was as good as dead, and then the power surges had started. It didn’t take long for the message to change, for the distress signals to scream out to get back. _Shelter. Warmth. There are units on their way, stay in the city_. _Find a grid that hasn’t shot itself to hell_. Louis recalls that scramble well, better than any memory he can conjure up from the start. It was always so loud. 

Now, there’s radio silence and nowhere to go. He can’t remember the last time he heard a message that wasn’t _evacuate, evacuate immediately_. Somewhere along the line there must have been a decision made to give up on them all, and there are no more rescues, no more helicopter blades thrumming like angel wings, no jeeps with flashing beacon lights, lighthouses out on wild waves. Just the eerie crumbling of tires on gravel during patrols and raids, the nightmarish, high whistle of an approaching plane dropping bombs. The rattle of a table, plaster dust floating down and getting stuck in the wet, tangled mess of lashes. 

He still remembers the first time they’d been caught out in an aerial raid, when it was just him and Daisy and they’d still had the house in Indiana, choosing to stay instead of getting out of the city, because Louis was indecisive and afraid and Daisy hadn’t stopped crying for weeks at the shadows that moved along the walls when they’d huddled together under the windows at night. A pink, fleshy scar runs along his back from where the ceiling had collapsed. There’s nothing left of that house now, or the street. There’s not much left of anything. 

“Hey, look.” Leigh-Anne ducks through the shattered window of a store, careful not to nick her skin, and crouches in the shadows. Louis follows her wordlessly, touches a hand to her shoulder as he ducks down beside her. 

“Oh, thank fuck,” he sighs out, already opening up his bag so Leigh-Anne can tuck the dented cans inside. Her fingers are scarred and bruised, the smooth dark of her skin streaked with scrapes. 

They haven’t seen any other groups around, nor a sign of them. If they had, Louis has no doubt they’d be left with nothing as soon as they cross paths, especially if they’ve found food. The small places are always the biggest risk. Safe territory doesn’t come easy. Louis has the scars to prove that. 

When they step back out into the sunlight, they both look up at the barely there rumble that’s echoing, mouths pulled into tight lines. A plane circles overhead, a single streak in the open, cloudless sky, and they watch it carefully, the wide circles it pulls around them before it heads back east again. 

“Two in a week,” Leigh-Anne murmurs. Louis nods slowly. They need to leave, even if they haven’t seen anything yet. If the army is moving in, then there’s something lingering that can’t be far away. It won’t be long before Phoenix goes up in flames again. “We have to move, head north or something.” 

“One last sweep,” Louis says, a thick weight already settling in his stomach. There’s no way in hell they can make it up to Colorado or Utah, and if they cut across east they’ll be as good as dead, buried under the desert. But they can’t go back west. Louis can’t go back to California. “We’ll head out tonight, out towards the plateaus. Try and find the pines until we figure out which way to go.” 

This is code for _I don’t have a plan and I’m sorry but we can try_ , and Leigh-Anne nods slowly in understanding, arms brushing as they kick a rock back and forth softly. Louis’ shoulders sag under the weight of his torn backpack, cans clinking together, eyes squinted against the harsh sun. 

-

They drive at the edge of dusk, light enough that they don’t need the smashed out headlights but dark enough that everything feels hidden away. There’s something still so heart-stopping about driving in such a palpable silence. The noise can draw them out, sometimes, and it’s like missing a step running full speed up a steep staircase when a lumbering body staggers onto the street, already obscured by the flickering dust they leave in their wake. 

When night hits they’re between towns, tucked away on the side of the road. Daisy is asleep inside, curled up on the truck bench with her head in Leigh-Anne’s lap, an illusion of safety behind the windows and the locked doors. Niall and Louis are curled in the back using their bags as pillows, using torn, dirty fabric as their blankets. Louis watches the stars instead of sleeping, tucking his blanket around Niall’s shaking body, always cold despite the lingering, sticky heat of the day. 

Arizona’s sky pours open in a dark, gooey treacle, spilt ink that’s been showered with glitter. He wishes, for a moment, distant and small against the scale of things, that he knew the constellations, that he could make some profound judgement about the stars and the future and read his own destiny through silver twinkles. 

He likes to stay awake for the moon, has come to find he likes the silver light it presses against the desert and the surrounding plateaus. He doesn’t pray anymore. He did, at the start, and he almost laughs at himself for it now, how insignificant it seems. But, if he did pray, if he did hold those same hopes from all those years ago, he’d pray to the moon. It’s more gentle than sunlight, still shines even when it oppressed on all sides by thick darkness. 

His fingers fiddle with the matchbox, pushing the interior container back and forward between his thumb and forefinger aimlessly, listening to the bud inside roll side to side with the movement as he searches for Mars or Jupiter, for a shooting star when he allows himself a split second of naivety. _I’ll build you a spaceship out of scrap metal_. _We’ll float around up there until things are good again._

Louis takes a deep breath and rolls onto his side, so he can press his face up against the firm lines of Niall’s back, so he can tuck his nose under a loose flap of blanket to hide away from the stars and the moon, stretching their reflexive gazes down on them, watching him back. Watching them all try to get by from far, far in the distance. 

-

They continue north because they can’t go west and going any other direction would be a waste of fuel now. Louis tries to tell himself it’s logic when he pushes his foot down on the accelerator.

Daisy is flicking through a torn up copy of _The Little Prince,_ stolen from the bedroom, pages ripped out and stained with dirt and flecks of blood, too ruined for her innocent fingers. Her feet are up on the dash, matching holes in the toes of her converse where she constantly rubs and digs them together when she’s nervous, a habit that Louis had as a child, too, though never as extreme. Niall has the window down beside her, leant on the sill and watching the dry earth stretch out before them, his arm floating through the air and moving in a slow wave, like they’re on a summer roadtrip. 

Daisy lets out a tiny giggle and Louis glances down at her, gaze softening immediately at the sound. “What, Dais?”

“Nothing,” she shakes her head, bright eyes meeting his. “I just think the little prince is funny. He called somebody a mushroom.” 

“A mushroom, huh?” Louis says.

“Yes,” Daisy grins, another giggle stuttering out of her chest, shaking the stark points of her collarbones. 

“What else does he say?” Louis muses.

“I’m not sure,” Daisy says, smile waning, and she holds up the book, where there’s a chunk of ripped up paper in the centre. “The next few pages are missing.” 

“I’m sure it was very insightful, whatever it was,” Louis says. He wonders where those pages are now, if someone ripped them out to hold onto them, a piece of something seemingly insignificant that they couldn’t let go of. 

“Probably,” Daisy shrugs and flops back against the seat, tapping her toes together as she flips the page and traces her finger over the faded drawing there, lips quirking when she whispers _mushroom_ with a faint puff of laughter. 

They aren’t going to make it to Colorado. Louis knows this, they all know it. One thing he’ll never get used to is the way the quiet of a dead planet veils all underlying panic, how it slows down his pulse so dangerously that a thudding, thundering heart would be more comfortable. Because right now, cruising along a deserted road in silence, looking up into the cracked rearview mirror, Louis shouldn’t feel calm and unbothered. He should be white-knuckled and speeding towards the state border, holding his breath. 

They pull over late into the afternoon, a quick pitstop in a tiny town that only stretches a few kilometres either side of the dusty road, a hurried sweep for supplies, anything they can get their hands on, a distant hope they’ll find gas. It’s a waste, and they come up mostly empty from the supermarkets, everything they find either too far gone or covered in mould and dirt. Louis stands with his eyes closed just for a moment, jaw clenched shut, breathing slow, once, twice, three times before he turns on his heel. 

It’s not until that he hears three honks, quick and distinct, that he and Leigh-Anne take off running, like they’ve suddenly been shot full of adrenaline. 

Niall is already in the driver’s seat when they vault into the back of the truck, dust spraying up as the tires screech over the road, shuddering and rocking when the accelerator gets slammed. Louis takes in huge, unsteady gulps of air and watches the shadowed figures that amble after them, lost in the cloud of dust they leave behind. Again, he tries to slow the rise of his chest, counts in his head, and slowly lowers his shotgun, falling onto his backside on the hard bed of the truck. 

Soon, they’re back out in the open, and Louis leans absently against the rusted metal, shotgun pressed firmly against his chest where he tucks his knees up. Daisy is watching him through the window, eyes wide and afraid, shiny with tears, and he gives her a tiny thumbs up, a reassuring, shaky smile, which she eventually returns. The nail on her thumb is bitten down and bleeding. 

-

When Louis was seven, his grandma was diagnosed with terminal cancer. 

He doesn’t remember much of that year, but he remembers feeling confused, afraid, and angry. That was the child playing up, the anger, because he didn’t know where else to channel anything he was feeling, and that just made him _more_ upset, because he got angry at his grandma too, who looked devastated every time he snapped at her, or threw a tantrum, or cried because she hadn’t left the hospital to come visit and bake gingersnaps on Sunday, and they _always_ baked on Sunday’s in the summer. 

His mom would always grab his wrist and pull him out of the room to scold him, bent down low. _Grandma is sick, Louis,_ she’d say, quietly, because it would be late at night and the ward would be silent. _She can’t come over anymore. You’ve got to bring the fun to her, alright? She’d like it very much if you could help her smile_. There was other things she’d say, too, that she understood he was upset but he had to try his best to make his grandma happy, and not to be mad when he didn’t get his way, that the more grandma laughed, the better she’d feel.

“She’ll be better if I make her laugh?” Louis had asked, and he remembers the shadows on his mother’s face when she’d bitten her lips into her mouth, splaying from half-cracked doors, the echoed _beep-beep_ of heart monitors drifting up into the pause. 

“So much better,” his mom said, eventually, stroking the tears off his flushed cheeks, patting down his hair and leading him by the shoulders back into his grandma’s room. He’d climbed onto the bed to hug her, and had apologized for being mean and making her upset, and that he’d learn to bake cookies all by himself so that she still felt like they’d done it together. 

For a long time, Louis did believe she was getting better, just like his mom had said. He visited every afternoon after school, and she’d read to him while Louis stared at the tubes in her arms and her nose, at the bald spots that had appeared in her greying, coarse hair, the pale, flaky patches on her skin, the places where the bones in her fingers were so pronounced he was almost scared to hold her hand. He made her laugh by singing and dancing for her, performing his favourite songs, and eventually, rehearsing his role in _The Wizard of Oz_. Their school was putting it on that year for the first time, and he was a chorus singer and one of the trees, which he was kind of annoyed about because he’d really wanted to play the Tin Man, even though he knew he wouldn’t get the role because it was his first musical. But his grandma had loved it, and sung along when he helped her learn the songs.

She told him he made for a very convincing tree, and pinky-promised to come see the show.

She died three weeks before opening night.

That anger came back, the wailing, full-body tantrum he threw when his mother came into school to pick him up early, gently breaking the news to him when there were home and sitting perched on the edge of Louis’ bed. Louis thought he was in trouble, stomach fraught with nerves, but then his mom had cupped the back of his head softly and told him that grandma had died that morning. There was no moment of pause before Louis had begun to cry, and he’d pulled away when his mom had tried to hug him.

“You lied,” he said, as mean and angry as he could. “You said she’d get better!”

“Sweetheart,” his mother tried to hug him again, but he kicked away and tangled himself under his covers, chest heaving and flushed red. “Louis, please. It’s okay if you’re upset. You’ve got to talk to me.”

“I don’t want to talk to you!” he shouted, lip wobbling dangerously, before he burst into full bodied sobs, because his mom was crying too and he was being mean again, but he couldn’t help it. “I want grandma! I want to see _grandma._ ” 

“Come here, darling,” his mom finally pulled him into her side, stroked his hair over and over while he heaved out wet gasps. “It’s okay, love, it’s okay. She’s in a better place now. She’s not hurting anymore.”

“You said she would be better,” Louis whimpered. “You _said_ , mom.” 

“I know, darling,” she sniffed harshly. “It’s not your fault. There’s nothing we could do, okay? Things happen sometimes, and we’ve got each other to get through it. Do you think grandma would want us to be upset with each other?”

“No,” Louis whispered miserably, sniffling. 

“Everything is going to be okay,” she kissed his forehead, and they’d stayed curled together like that until Louis’ crying had subsided and he fell into an exhausted sleep against her side, head heavy and pounding from all the tears that had been squeezed out of his pinched expression. 

Maybe it had been naivety, a sense of hope that hadn’t yet been tainted and stripped away, but he really did believe that she would get better, that the smile on her cracked face was pulling away from whatever was growing inside her, that the cancer wouldn’t eat away at her until there was nothing left if Louis kept her eyes bright and shiny, if he could somehow cheat death and destiny like the heroes in all the fairytales and the stories his mom read him did. 

But he couldn’t, and then she died, and she was gone. 

When the cure first emerged, a shiny beacon of hope, a catalyst for a violent, mad scramble, it had seemed like a miracle. The infected were treated, the symptoms disappeared. The living continued to live. Louis had always thought about his grandma, in the beginning, in a distant way, nostalgic and maudlin over something he didn’t think he could fix. 

So there was a cure, and those who could get to it in time were okay, and suddenly it seemed that things would be fine, that they’d stopped the virus spreading. 

That was before, though, before cold bodies opened their eyes again, before warm bodies suddenly lost their warmth.

That was before they realized you can’t cure something that’s already dead. 

-

It feels like far too soon when they run out of fuel.

“Shit,” Niall says, almost deadpan, staring at the dashboard as they slow to a stop, rolling off the side of the road. “Okay. Well.”

“Come on,” Louis sighs, and he opens the door with his foot more aggressively than intended. It’s a hot, grueling day. It hurts to look out at the horizon. 

Daisy jumps out after him, kicking up dust immediately, fingers looped around the ends of her braids as she drags the tip of her shoe back and forth in the dirt, making a half circle and staining her converse bright red. Louis watches her for a moment, the squinty blink of her eyes when she ducks her head against the sun, freshly burnt on her nose again, the skin on her forehead only just finished peeling. He can’t fail her. 

“Now what?” Leigh-Anne says. She leans over the side of the truck on her elbows, gaze lingering back towards where they’ve just come from.

Louis feels everything starting to slip through his fingers. They can’t go back, not when they know what’s waiting for them, what could be following them. He lifts his eyes ahead, where he can see the desert starting to blend with the shrubs and the chaparral plants, and higher, where the ground shifts and elevates, the pines are a hazy blur. It looks like a mirage, green plants wavering back and forth through the heat. 

The sun licks at his neck, gathers sweat on his forehead and makes his eyelids sticky. Their only choice is to walk, and Louis hangs his head, guilt pooling in his stomach, making his limbs heavy as he watches Daisy crouch by the truck now, frail figure hidden in the shade, one hand over her eyes as she squints up at him, nose scrunched. He’s been determined for so long to survive, and now it’s all unraveling. Niall is watching him knowingly, and he places a cautious hand on the back of Louis’ neck, drawing him in. Their best bet is to go into the forest, but even then, their chances aren’t great. He won’t cry, he refuses to cry, but the burning his eyes swells. _Crying is no good now. Save your tears, Lou._

“We’ll be fine,” he says, sharp and sudden, composing himself and pulling out of Niall’s hold slowly. “We’ve got enough food. If we travel at night, when it’s cool, we’ll be fine. We’ll be okay.” 

Sunset takes an almost laughable amount of time to finally settle. They line up with their backs against the truck so that the shadow of it falls over them, eyes blearily half shut at the reflection the light beams back at them off the bright ground. Daisy scrunches her face up as Leigh-Anne tightly re-braids her hair, combing through the disastrous knots with thin fingers, and after, she uses _The Little Prince_ as a hat to shield herself from the sun, dirty fingertips gripping the edges of the back and cover, musing the top of her newly neatened hair. 

When they set off, there’s nothing Louis wants to do more than dig his heels into the ground and stay by the truck. It feels too exposed to be walking around in the open like this. He’s used to having cover, at least, used to being able to duck under an overturned car or into the grimy shadow of a doorway, used to being able to duck left or right and find something to protect himself with. As they begin their trek towards the treeline, he’s too hyper aware of the bareness that surrounds them, and his neck hurts from where he’s craning it up at the sky, mistaking the first flash of stars for planes, mistaking the place where blue is turning bronze for a stream of hazy contrails. 

By the time they’re actually starting to duck through the thinned pines, shoes prickled with dry shrubs and dirt, twilight is a heavy blanket. There’s only a thin fog of yellow light left on the horizon, nipping at their heels as it’s dragged below ground. Daisy takes long strides, jumping between exposed tree roots, balanced against the flaky trunks of the pines. Strips of bark flake away and getting caught in the static of her t-shirt. Their goal for now is to find somewhere sheltered, a fallen tree or a cavern, anything. 

The silence is maddening, not because he can’t hear anything, but because every noise that _they_ make seems amplified. The rustle of clothing, dried bark crunching, tins clicking mutely together, even just their breathing. He can feel Niall trailing behind him, can hear the swivel of his feet as he checks behind them every few seconds, ansty and unsure. Each time a branch scrapes over his arms or a stray plant whispers against the bare skin of his calves, his skin goes taut with goosebumps despite the heat, and he tuck his shoulders in, breathing in and out evenly. 

The settling darkness creates shadows and figures out of the trees, and Daisy starts to hang back beside him, her eagerness to explore dwindled. She’s got both her hands clasped around the straps of her backpack, tugging them up and down, back and forth as she looks around them constantly, leant into his side. Leigh-Anne is leading up ahead, but there’s a weariness in her gait, a hesitancy when her toe catches on loose tree roots, unable to see the path ahead.

“Maybe we should stop,” Niall says, a whisper of air on Louis’ neck. Only the shiny whites of his eyes are clear in the twilight, the rest of his body shadowed. “We’ll make too much noise.” 

“Agreed,” Louis whispers back, coming to a slow halt and whistling low. Leigh-Anne turns, hand resting on a thick trunk.

“Just a little further,” she says. “I think we’re almost at the top of the hill.”

It’s slow work. Louis tries to feel out the roots and fallen branches with his feet before each step, holding his breath at every snapping twig. Things seem to echo around him, and each time Daisy stumbles, or one of their arms brush against a branch, he swears he hears it amplified in the distance, coming towards them. He doesn’t notice that Leigh-Anne has stopped walking until he literally runs into her, too focused on watching his feet, and his heart rockets up into his throat for just a moment, breath caught in his chest, before he settles. 

“Look,” she says, standing stock still. Louis follows her line of vision, through the sparse spread of trees that circle the hilltop. It looks like the shadow of a house. “Should we…?”

Louis listens out for a moment, for any signs, for dragging feet, crackling branches or husky, worn out breath, but it’s silent. It’s just them. He nods slowly, and takes his shotgun properly into his hands, loosening the strap as they start to close in. It doesn’t seem like much, a tiny box of a building that’s all wood, overgrown with weeds. Glass crunches softly under his feet, and he pauses for a moment, looking to where the windows are smashed, but boarded up from the inside. The panes are splintered and broken. Bullet holes have ripped through the edges. 

“Do you think it’s a bunker?” Niall says. He’s crouched down on the ground, feeling through the dry earth. There’s a shard of glass cradled in his hands when he looks up curiously, following Louis’ gaze back to the windows. “I’m pretty sure this used to be a national park. No reason for a house to even be here.” 

“It might be,” Louis says. If it’s still inhabited, trying to get inside could be a fatal mistake. But if it’s empty, they might find supplies. _Fuel_ , his brain whispers, tantalizing and soft. 

The closer they get, the more rundown it looks. Only one of the steps on the tiny porch is still intact, the rest splintered and broken into pieces. The actual porch itself is a small square, boards missing from the floor, full of holes that sprout tangled desert weeds. Louis steps onto it cautiously, fully expecting the creak that echoes out into the eerie silence, and he grips his gun tighter, swallowing around the lump in his throat when he feels the others gather behind him. 

There are bullet holes in the door itself, too, chunks of wood splintered and frayed. Louis reaches for the handle cautiously, holds his breath as he twists it and listens for movement inside, for the low, animalistic growl of the undead, for gnashing teeth, uneven footsteps. Nothing comes, and he breathes out a tiny sigh when the door swings open silently into an abyss of shadows. Moonlight fogs over the unboarded window across from the entry, lighting only the panes and what looks like a sink on the other side of the room. 

“Okay,” Louis whispers, more to himself than anything. He takes a slow step over the threshold. 

Immediately, he hears the unmistakable click of a shotgun pump, and he whirls to the side, raising his own gun, both barrels face to face.

Every muscle in his body has locked up, strung tight as he stares down the barrel that almost brushes his nose, follows the line of it up to a pair of narrowed, steely eyes. There’s a suspended moment of total silence, and Louis doesn’t back down, manages to keep his arms steady and his chin jutted, chest rising and falling steadily as they regard each other. Louis pumps the handle on his shotgun slowly. He has no idea if this man is alone. 

“I don’t want any trouble,” the man says evenly, deep and almost lost under the quiet of nighttime. He’s lit only by the thin strips of moonlight that poke through the boards over the windows, silver streaks that reveal nothing but a harsh gaze and the shadow of stubble above a cupid’s bow lip. Louis flexes his fingers around the forestock, sweaty and shaking. He’s in a slight state of shock. He didn’t think they’d run into anybody else out here, but even so, they clearly outnumber this stranger, who’s obviously protecting _something_. Louis thinks of Daisy, of where her skin is stretched tight over her ribs, the taut lines of her face, the sunken shadows under her eyes. Thinks of their truck, still out on the middle of the road, in working condition. 

“Neither do we,” Louis says, putting emphasis on the _we_. The man doesn’t move, but his eyes harden, and Louis almost balks, would be running across the glass littered lawn if he couldn’t feel Niall’s presence lingering on the porch, if he hadn’t fought tooth and nail for scraps of food like a stray dog in the past. There’s something threatening about the way the man is staring down at him, though, the stillness of his face and body, the steady rise and fall of his chest. He hasn’t moved, and Louis realizes now that they aren’t going to get anything without negotiation, or force. Nobody else has emerged from the shadows, though. There’s nobody else here to stop them.  

Louis nearly pulls the trigger when Daisy leans through the doorway, flinching at the sudden movement. He almost yells at her to get back, pulse throbbing through his skull as she rests her thin body against the splintered door frame, peering curiously up at the man, who still has his gun pointed at Louis. His eyes, though, have snapped down to Daisy, and he watches her carefully, intently, slowly flicking his gaze back and forth between them. Daisy watches the man with a scrutiny that Louis would find laughable if they were in any other situation, if there wasn’t a gun aimed between his eyes. She looks afraid, eyes shiny and wide, but also determined, glazed with a coldness that reminds him of their mom. He blinks harshly against the memory, and finds that the man has begun to slowly lower his gun, still staring down at Daisy.

“Do you…” he brings his gaze back to Louis, breathing out slowly, the steely shine slowly fading. “Do you need food? Water?” 

“What?” Louis blinks. The man glances down at the barrel of the gun, then back up.

“Food,” he repeats. “Water.” 

“You’ve got water?” Daisy says, and she sounds awed, which makes Louis want to crumple. 

“I do,” he says softly. “Please, you can–. I’ll give you what you need. Just don’t kill me. Please.” 

Louis lowers his gun, staring, a little bewildered at the sudden change in the air around them, the almost pleading desperation to the man’s voice. “I’m not going to kill you.” 

The man breathes out slowly, closing his eyes for a moment. “Okay. Um,” he takes a few steps back, gun lax in his grip. “Come in.” 

“Right,” Louis says. He keeps Daisy close as they shuffle in, thankful for the way Niall crowds up against his back, the cautious way Leigh-Anne flanks their sides, her hand resting softly over Daisy’s head, brushing fly-away hairs back as they maneuver themselves through the dark. The man watches them for a moment, setting his gun down hesitantly and crossing the room like a shadow, to a tall set of cupboards, completely chipped and faded. 

“You can, uh,” the man gestures with an odd tilt of his head. “You can sit down.” 

There are three couches huddled together in the corner of the room, torn and rumpled. Daisy happily flops onto one of them, throwing her bag noisily onto the floor and letting out a happy sigh, so loud and unabashed in the quiet. Louis sits beside her and rolls his shoulders, wincing at the ache that ripples down his back. Leigh-Anne and Niall squeeze themselves onto the one couch, tracking the man’s movements. 

Louis lets his gaze roam around the room, perplexed, and confused, and slightly marveled. The house itself actually seems to be partly intact, aside from the boarded up windows and the bullet holes. There are piles of books on the floor, on the wonky coffee table in front of them, dusty candles, a smashed in television shoved in the corner, the actual wrapping of what looks like a fucking _muesli bar_ scrunched up beneath a stack of old newspapers. Louis stares down at it, reaches out and silently turns it over in his hands. He can’t remember the last time he ate something that wasn’t in a can, or a whole year past its expiry. 

“Water?” the man offers, and Louis flinches, swallows when the man flicks his gaze down to the wrapper in his grip. There’s a bottle in his hand, and Louis takes it slowly, passes it to Daisy hesitantly. It can’t be fresh, there’s no way it’s fresh. “It’s boiled, don’t worry.” 

“Where did you get it?” Niall narrows his eyes.

“The lake,” the man says. “I walk there during the day.” 

“Thank you,” Daisy says wetly, coughing slightly as she swallows down huge, thirsty gulps. Her chin is shiny in the dappled moonlight, droplets clinging to her skin. “Thank you, um–”

“Harry,” the man supplies.

“Thanks, Harry,” she coughs again, a wet burp of noise, eyes shining.

“Hey, slow down, love,” Louis warns, and he pries the bottle from her shaky hands, sludge settling in his stomach. “You’ll feel sick.” 

“But I’m so thirsty,” she whines softly. 

“I know,” Louis says, swallowing. “I know, Dais. Rationing, yeah?”

“Yeah,” she sighs. She curls her knees up to her chest and hands the bottle over to Louis. He takes three long, slow sips, eyes fluttering closed, the dry tackiness of his mouth finally flooded. 

“I didn’t get your name,” the man, _Harry_ , says. Louis glances at him. He looks smaller now, somehow, sitting on the remaining couch by himself, wide palms spread over his knees.

“Louis, and that’s Leigh-Anne and Niall,” Louis says. Niall has his eyes closed, his own bottle of water pressed up against his neck. Leigh-Anne wipes at her wet lips and gives a tiny wave. “And this–”  

“I’m Daisy,” Daisy says. Her toes are scrunched together, Louis notices, poking through the holes, knees tucked together. Harry smiles gently at her. 

“Are you hungry?” he asks. She nods slowly, glancing up at Louis questioningly. Sometimes, Louis wonders how she’s managed to keep a moral compass so in check through all this, how she’s so young but still questions right and wrong. He gives her a reassuring smile, lets her know it’s okay to ignore the food they’ve already got, even though she still looks slightly unsure, bottom lip bitten into her mouth. 

There’s a part of Louis’ brain that refuses to keep quiet, as he watches Harry watch Daisy. His stare is curious, full, and it’s almost reflex for Louis to step in front of her, wary of this stranger, locked up alone in this random house in the middle of fucking Arizona. Something about it feels inherently sinister, and he shifts closer to his sister subtly, teeth clenched together.

“I’ve got noodles,” Harry says slowly. “And, uh. Canned fruit, I think? That’s what I’m up to.” 

“ _Noodles?_ ” Daisy gasps happily, eyes all lit up. “Like...ramen?”

“Yeah,” Harry says, and a dimple carves itself into his cheek. “Ramen.”

“You’ve got ramen noodles,” Leigh-Anne says, deadpan, one brow raised. Harry shrinks slightly, flingers sliding up his knees and onto his thighs.

“I do,” he nods. “I’ve only got a few bags left, though.”

 _Bags_. Louis meets Niall’s eye, quick, and they share a look. Bags of food, and not just canned shit. Actual, packaged food. Shotgun. Water, that’s been boiled, which means he’s either got access to matches or can make a fire from scratch. Or he’s got some type of fuel. Gas bottles, maybe. Jerrycans. Who knows what else is tucked away.

Harry stands again, moves across the room to rummage through the cupboards again, and Louis startles when Daisy shoots up to follow, almost wrapping a firm, frightened hand around her thin wrist. She’s too quick, though, hands clasped behind her back as she stands over Harry’s crouched body. Louis curls his fingers into his thighs and watches him, ready to spring into action if he tries anything.

“Chicken or vegetable?” Harry asks, and what the _fuck_. Louis tries to wrap his head around this, that this man has pouches of fucking ramen seasoning.

“Chicken, _please_ ,” Daisy says. 

“Sure,” he says. “Are we all good with chicken?”

Nobody answers for a moment, until Niall slowly says _okay_ , looking as confused as Louis feels. Daisy plops down beside Louis again, chattering away to Leigh-Anne about how excited she is to eat chicken ramen for the first time in forever, and Louis stares at Harry’s silhouette, the broad, muscled shift of his shoulders beneath his dirt-streaked shirt, the awkward cut of his hair that he probably did himself. He keeps glancing back over, cautious with his back turned, and something in Louis’ stomach twists when their eyes meet. 

“Sorry that it’s cold,” Harry says, carefully starting to carry over chipped bowls of soggy noodles, looking guilty, like they’re five class diners and he’s embarrassed to be serving them.

“Don’t apologize,” Leigh-Anne says, snorting. “This is great, thank you.” 

Daisy starts to slurp at her noodles immediately, and she sends Louis a huge grin, eyes lit up, skin glowing like he hasn’t seen in so long. That does make him smile, the brightness that starts to filter into her expression as she eats, tipping the bowl carefully against her mouth to drink the flavoured water. Louis eats his food slowly, trying to get used to the sensation of putting something in his stomach that isn’t sloppy and canned. He gets full too quickly. 

“How did you end up here?” Harry says all the sudden, cutting through their silent eating. Louis pauses. Harry chews slowly, watching him from under the strong line of his brows. _How did you find me?_

“We came from California,” Louis says, and Harry freezes, his fork halfway to his mouth. It’s plastic. There’s only one prong left.

“Why the _hell_ would you leave there?” he asks, brow furrowed harshly, gaze flicking to Daisy for a moment. “To come here, of all places?” 

Louis glares at him, hackles rising. “Something happened,” he says quietly, “and we left.” 

“Why did _you_ come here?” Niall cuts in sharply. 

Harry balks slightly, and he stirs the noodles in his bowl aimlessly, not meeting their eyes. “Something happened,” he echoes. 

They fall back into silence. Harry is hunched over his bowl, eyes trained resolutely on the table in front of him, toes tucked together, almost mirroring the way Daisy tends to sit. She’s gone quiet now too, bowl empty, bottom lip tucked between her teeth as she blinks at Harry slowly, a curious spark in her eyes. It’s been awhile since they’ve interacted this closely with anyone outside of their group, and this feels strange and foreign even for him, being in such a small space with someone he doesn’t know or remotely trust. For all he knows, Harry could pick them off tonight, search their bags and keep everything for himself. Harry is probably thinking the exact same thing about them, and it creates a hostility that verges on palpable.

“If you need somewhere to go for the night, you’re welcome to stay,” Harry says, looking only slightly unsure of himself as he gathers their bowls up, so hospitable and quiet and nothing like the man that almost blew Louis’ head off earlier. 

“Thank you,” Louis says. 

Harry collects Daisy’s bowl. “Um, if you wanted, you can have my bed for the night. If you, um,” he fumbles, glancing down at Louis, “if you’d feel it’s safer, for her.” 

Before Louis can reply, eyes narrowed slightly, Daisy cuts in. “That’s okay, Harry,” she says sweetly, so polite that Louis’ heart warms all on it’s own. “I like it when I get to sleep on couches. It reminds me of a sleepover.”

“That’s a nice way of putting it,” Harry says.

“When we used to have a flashlight, we’d pretend it was a fire and tell camp stories,” Daisy says. There’s something about that, the way her eyes stay bright, that makes Louis’ own eyes burn. He doesn’t get too caught up on it. He never does, he’d go mad otherwise. 

Harry looks amused, smiling down at her warmly. “I think I’ve got one, if you’d like?”

“ _Really?_ ” she breathes, sitting up on her knees, hands clasped together against her chest. She turns to Louis, hitting at his shoulder excitedly. “I can read _The Little Prince_ to you, Lou!”

“I love that book,” Harry says. Daisy positively glows at that, and she scrambles towards her bag, already chatting away as she searches for her book, crossing the room to sit beside Harry and show it to him, flicking to the dog-eared pages, giggling when she finds the ‘mushroom’ part, and Harry laughs with her, reserved and soft but still friendly, taking in every word she says with rapt interest, nodding and humming in all the right places. 

Louis is almost taken aback by her enthusiasm. She’s not normally so interested in talking to strangers, sticks close to Louis’ side and keeps herself guarded and quiet because she isn’t used to new people, which hurts every part of his chest. But right now, she seems open and friendly, maybe because Harry has been kind, has fed her and given her water. Maybe she’s forgotten he almost shot her brother. Niall sends Louis another look, and Leigh-Anne is watching on too, the three of them sat in silence as Daisy talks. Louis won’t interrupt her, despite how on edge he is. It’s nice to see her with actual light in her eyes. 

Harry does end up finding a flashlight, rummaging through a tub by the door. It’s a weak, barely there glow, but Louis still stares at it and feels like some kind of moth, drawn towards it, wanting to reach out and touch just to check if it’s actually real. Daisy looks positively enthralled. The muddy glow changes the light around them from silver and blue to shadows of brown and yellow, and Louis blinks slowly as Harry sits back down beside Daisy, placing the torch under his chin to light it from underneath, pulling a funny face that makes her dissolve into shy giggles, the shadows of his features wonky and long.

His hair is brown, cropped by his ears, but so poorly done that it’s grown back different lengths, errant curls framing the sharp angle of his jaw and face, shaggy at the back, swept off his forehead and sticking up slightly at the front where it’s shortest. The shirt he’s wearing is torn at the bottom, ragged and dirty much like their own clothes, the collar frayed and falling to pieces along the neckline. Louis can’t really tell, but his eyes look hazel, maybe green, wispy lashes frosted by the torchlight, brows narrow and set. Louis watches him pull another face, sticking out his tongue.

“You look like a mushroom,” Daisy says, then giggles at her own insult.

“ _Thank_ you,” Harry says, with this dumb, pompous accent that rolls oddly off his tongue. Daisy laughs again, shoulders tucked up by her ears, leaning in close to him like they’ve known each other for years. 

She gets tired quickly, book growing lax in her grip as she reads to them, her back propped up against the armrest of the couch. Harry is quiet beside her, listening with his hands folded over his stomach, leaning forward to help her with words she doesn’t understand. By the third yawn, Harry carefully plucks the book from her hand and rests it on the coffee table, watching her carefully as she curls up into a little ball against the side of the couch, eyes closed. Louis’ back feels stiff. He doesn’t know if he’s moved at all since he’s sat down, spine locked, tiny bits of skin littering his pants from the anxious way he’s been picking at his fingers. Leigh-Anne has fallen asleep already, nodding off against the back of the couch. 

Harry leaves the room for a moment, and he comes back with an old sheet that he throws over Daisy gently, carefully, meeting Louis’ eye just before hand to check that it’s okay. Louis says nothing, throat oddly closed over as he watches Harry tuck her in with shaky fingers, brushing his hair out of his face as he stands, pausing awkwardly. 

“Um,” he says. “Goodnight. I’m just down the hall, if anything–. If you need me.”

“Thanks,” Louis says, glancing at Daisy, the content look on her sleeping face. “Thank you.” 

Harry rocks back on his heels for a moment, then starts to amble down the hall, hands locked together in front of him as he goes. 

Niall turns to him immediately. “What the fuck.”

“I know,” Louis murmurs.

“What should we do?” Niall says. 

“I’m not sure,” Louis swings his legs up onto the couch and bites at his thumb. “He’s obviously got supplies. I’m interested to see how he’s boiling his water.”

“You think he’s hoarding gas?” Niall asks carefully. 

“Maybe,” Louis says. “I have no idea how he got it out here though. How he got any of this shit out here.”

“Who knows,” Niall shrugs. “‘Something happened’, ‘s what he said. Same thing as us. Maybe he’s, like, secretly with the military.” 

“I doubt that,” Louis snorts, and Niall laughs, pushing his hands through the knots of his hair.

“Investigate tomorrow?” he says.

“Sure,” Louis sighs out, wincing at the springs digging into his back when he lies down, the places where he can feel the frame of the couch, all the stuffing ripped out. Not that he’s complaining. He hasn’t slept on actual furniture for months. 

-

At the beginning of everything, during the first few weeks the infection spread, before the dead were undead and everything truly turned on it’s head, Louis remembers being huddled inside with his family, waiting for a cure. _Top scientists around the world are working to find a solution_. It sounded scripted and fake, and Louis had watched the news with a sinking weight in his stomach, because everyone was getting sick, and a lot of people had died already. They were all waiting for the hallelujah moment, for a break through, the one that always gets shown in the big, blockbuster movies, when the hero chugs down the antidote and suddenly all is good in the world.

And the cure did come. It did. So did the vaccination. 

It just didn’t come soon enough, because people started turning before they died.

When that news broke, chaos descended. It was a mad rush to clinics and hospitals, crowds gathered and filling entire sheets waiting in line for a needle. That was when the infection really started to spread. People who didn’t even know they were sick yet lined up. It was weeks of being crushed among crowds, holding the twins hands and pulling them close, away from people screaming and crying and desperately clawing their way through anything and everything to get inside, to get that precious dose. 

Louis never got to the vaccine, at first. None of them did. 

Things always get a little hazy after that. He remembers his mom getting sick, remembers them planning to take separate cars out of the state, to the country clinics that had more space, trying not to panic when she started to show symptoms, when Lottie did too, and Fizzy, and then Phoebe, one after the other, like the virus was planning to pick them off. Louis had stayed with Daisy when they’d gone, and he’d been too anxious to leave the next morning, the house locked up because there were reports of people roaming the streets, muggings and attacks and maulings, sirens ringing at a near constant. 

When he thinks about his grandma now, it feels like there are stones in his stomach. She was never going to survive, no matter how much Louis made her smile, no matter what he did. The cancer grew inside her and ate away at her until there was nothing left, and then she’d died, and that had been it. She was gone.

Indiana went into lockdown as the sun rose, an official quarantine order. All Louis can recall from the terror of the weeks that followed was hiding and being somewhere dark and twisted, doing everything he could to reassure Daisy that they’d be okay, that they weren’t going to die, that monsters weren’t real and that there were people coming to save them. Nobody came. 

The bombs came instead, heavy and fast and out of nowhere on the city and the suburbs. 

He’d laid himself over Daisy, shouted _everything is going to be okay_ , over and over, his mom’s own words, a simple lie to try and help her feel safe. They’d emerged from the rubble, bleeding and bruised, surrounded by military and low flying planes and the rotting smell of human flesh, the undead crawling through the streets in bits and pieces, limbs and insides strewn across the street. 

Louis had pushed Daisy into the car, still shaking and bleeding and he couldn’t feel his back and there was something so, so, so very wrong when they drove out on the road and they saw bodies sprawled on the ground, bodies running towards their car to try and get inside, bodies running towards them with holes and grey skin and hunger in their eyes, hands slamming against the windows, tires lurching over rubble and people and things and when they finally broke through, speeding past the army trucks that did nothing to stop them, guns in hands, already closing in on the place he’d grown up that was just dirt and death and disease, he realized that he’d been repeating the words over and over to himself.

_Everything is going to be okay, everything is going to be okay, everything is going to be okay._

-

The worst thing about being isolated like this is that Louis can hear every minute detail around him. 

He can distinguish Daisy’s breath from Niall’s, can hear the tiny shivers of the trees outside, the odd crackle of branches from nondescript animals, the ones that have somehow survived and are crawling their way through the dirt. Sleep doesn’t come, and he doesn’t expect it to, but there’s a buzzing under his skin, an itch that makes him scratch his nails along his arms almost absently, staring at the shattered, jagged edges of the television screen. Just for a moment, it’s pouring bright, bleary pink light out at him, it’s two in the morning and he’s watching cartoons, fingers numb from the bowl of ice cream in his hands, melting in summer heat, the world glazed sugary and sweet and sticky. 

He blinks and everything goes dark again, the air musty and heady with sweat and dirt. 

Despite the silence, it takes him a moment to register the low hum that’s settled as a distant thing, the steady, vibrating sound of an engine. His nails are digging harder into his skin, the buzz intensifying, and then, for what can’t be longer than three seconds, the hum turns into a rushing _whoomph_ , rattling his chest. He sits up immediately, clutching at his elbows, and swallows thickly. 

It happens again, further away this time, but it’s getting louder, closing in from all sides, and Louis stands, stumbles out of the room and down the darkened hall, searching for a way outside. Finally, he manages to push open a heavy door, the stairs rotted away so that Louis’ foot lands straight onto the prickly grass when he steps out, heart lodged up in his throat for a moment at the tiny drop. Closing his eyes, he takes three steady breaths, stands straight, and silently rounds the house to sit on the front stoop. 

The wood is rotting so badly that it feels almost damp. He sits with his chin on his knees, arms looped around his thighs, occasionally sparing a glance skyward to watch the tiny blink of red lights in the distance, a passive flicker over the silver of the moon. 

On it’s own, his mind starts to run. Back when – before they’d left California, he’d never let himself delve into normality too often. There was no point thinking about what had past, what could have been if this and that had never happened. But he can’t help it now, sitting on this stoop surrounded by hot air, can’t help imagining all the scenarios where this very moment would be different. Maybe he’d be at a party, on a smoke break, watching fireflies dance with red-lined eyes, half-high and hazy. Maybe this is his house, it’s three a.m and he’s watching the stars and waiting for something, for a hand in his, a kiss to his neck, an apology, and affirmation, anything that isn’t loss or hurt, something that resolves. 

A hand brushes against his shoulder, and instantly, he turns to throw a hit at whatever’s there, heart leaping up into this throat. His fist collides painfully with Harry’s knee, who yelps and buckles over immediately, making the old porch shudder obnoxiously in the still of nighttime. 

“What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?” Louis hisses, fist still raised, his other hand clutching his chest as he takes in giant, rasping breaths. 

Again, if they weren’t in this world right now, if this was some other dimension or time or place, Louis would laugh, would be red-faced and grinning at the absurd hurt in Harry’s eyes, the way he’s clutching his knee as he hobbles over to the edge of the stoop and sits gingerly beside Louis. 

They’re not in that world though. “What are you thinking, sneaking up like that?” 

“Sorry,” Harry breathes, ducking his head, clearly flustered. “I didn’t–. I heard the door. I just had to check.” 

Louis watches him for a moment, watches the way he rubs his fingers over his thighs, eyes on his shoes. He looks down at his own feet, at the mismatched, frayed rope shoved through the holes. “Couldn’t sleep?” 

“No,” Harry says softly. “I don’t, not really.”

“Me either,” Louis says, staring out through the thin trees. He sees Harry glance at him, but then he follows Louis’ gaze.

They sit in silence for a long time. Louis tries desperately to send the signal that he wants to be alone, hunches himself up and looks down at the ground, practically radiating _please go away_ without actually saying anything. Harry’s presence is making his insides turn, skin still prickled with the aftershocks of being jolted, the tiny whispers of memories forgotten snaking up his spine. Harry doesn’t seem to notice the hostility Louis is trying to radiate, though. He’s got his arms crossed over his knees, one hand up by his face to repeatedly brush a loose curl behind his ear that keeps popping forward, looking out through the gaps in the trees, the strong slopes of his face shadowed by moonlight. 

“Thank you,” Louis says eventually, ready to burst at the seams. At Harry’s questioning blink, Louis contitunes, “For letting us stay, I mean. It’s nice to see Daisy smile. I know it’s difficult to deal with strangers.” 

Distantly, he thinks about what will happen come morning. They could be gone, this little house in the middle of nowhere completely looted, fuel and food and water all theirs for the taking. They could take it all and run and Harry will never know where they were heading, where they’d end up. Louis can’t tell if that thought comes from the instinct for survival or the development of a trait that's the product of a selfish kind of complex, the intrinsic need to protect himself and Daisy over anyone else. _You shouldn’t think like that, Lou. That’s how people end up dead._

Harry’s brings him out of his head. “It’s okay,” he says, open and earnest in a way that’s slightly terrifying. “I would never turn anyone with kids away. Or anyone, really,” he laughs softly, a quiet huff of breath, “unless they were actually going to cause me trouble.” 

Louis studies him for a moment, and finds that he can’t find any correlation between this quiet man and the one who’d greeted him at the door with a barrell aimed at his head. Still, though, there’s something beneath Harry’s stillness, beneath the steady hold of his gaze that makes Louis’ fingers curl up, breath held tightly in his chest, afraid to let it go, to startle the crackling air between them. They don’t trust each other, not at all, leant wearily apart. 

“How did you end up here?” Louis says slowly, hoping for a real answer this time. The tilt to Harry’s mouth tells him he isn’t going to get it. 

“How did you?” Harry says, brow raised. 

Again, they fall into silence, just the whistle of the pines and their breathing. There’s the sound of something lighting in the distance, an echoed, fuzzy _zwip_ followed by a red spark, a hazy stream of coloured smoke. The earth shudders under them, the house rattling gently, and Louis takes in a deep breath, can almost smell the cloying smoke that’s begun to stretch upward from here. 

“Don’t you ever get worried that they’ll find you?” Louis says.

“Which ‘they?’” Harry says, answering a question with a question again, pairing it with a small, wry smile. 

Louis huffs out a blunt laugh. “Take your pick, I guess.” 

Harry chuckles, low and deep in his chest, digging his toe into the ground. It almost feels normal. It almost feels like they could be friends, like they could be seventeen and on the verge of a new love, a dumb high school crush ignited by proximity and alcohol. It almost feels like their faces aren’t lit by the distant glow of a destroyed city, but the soft glow of fairy lights instead. It almost feels like the rumble of jets pulsing between them is music. 

“You’ll be okay out here?” Harry says, standing slowly, brushing himself off like it’ll make a difference. 

The ground tremors again, fire glowing orange and hot far, far away. 

“Sure,” Louis murmurs, craning his neck up to meet Harry’s eye. 

He lingers for a moment, longer than Louis wants him to, and it sparks an annoyance in him again. He pulls too hard at the skin by his thumb, warm blood bubbling up to the surface. He sucks the side of it into his mouth and tastes metal, listening to Harry’s feet on the grass, the swing of a door. The retreating roar of planes. 

When the sun starts to crawl hesitantly over the horizon, the smoke splits the sky into hazy halves. 

-

Daisy is already up when Louis drags himself back inside. There’s a new book in her hands, one she must’ve picked up from the coffee table or the floor, a white and pink hardcover that’s stained an awful, tainted brown. Her legs are hooked over the armrest, splayed out on her back with the book above her, a muffed smile on her lips as she reads. 

“Morning,” Leigh-Anne says, stretching slowly.

“Morning,” Louis echoes, folding himself over the back of the couch to press his fingers into Daisy’s stomach. She curls up immediately, giggly and squirming.

“Stop, Lou!” she huffs, gone pink cheeked, book open on her chest. _Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland_ , the title reads. An unexplained rush of maudlin gnaws at Louis’ chest. 

“Fine, fine,” he relents, settling his fingers in her hair instead. She’s taken out her braids, hair flowing wavy and free, gold in the slatted light that slips between the boards on the windows. “Where’d you get that?”

“Harry said I could borrow it,” she chirps, flicking the page over and smiling. “I like the pictures, and the poems. They’re funny.” 

Louis continues to stroke her hair back from her face, surveying the room. It’s quiet, the cupboards closed up, no noise from down the hall. Slowly, he brings his gaze back to Niall, who’s already watching. 

“He’s not here,” he says quietly, and Louis’ fingers come to a slow stop as he, Niall and Leigh-Anne all share a glance. 

If they’re going to do anything, they have to do it now. They have to take what they need and go. If Harry’s gone they can search the house, and God knows what they’ll find. The possibility of finding fuel and food stored makes Louis’ hands twitch, the thought of keeping Daisy safe and hydrated and healthy for as long as he can too tantalizing to let slip. 

When he looks down at her, she’s already looking up at him, eyes big and shiny, bottom lip tucked between her teeth, book clutched tightly in her hands.

“But, Lou,” she whispers, choked and soft. “Harry was so nice to us.” 

“I know, darling,” Louis brushes a wispy curl out of her eye and tries to fight the crushing need to cry. “I know he was.” 

Daisy remains curled up on the couch while they start a frantic search, rifling through the cupboards and pulling up the raggedy mats, searching for loose floorboards and nooks. It feels as though all air gets sucked away when Niall pulls up a creaky plank and pauses, bending down slowly. When he rises, there’s a small jerry-can in his arms. Full. Four more follow before Niall hauls up another board and drops beneath the house, muttering _holy fuck_ up into the silence. 

While Niall and Leigh-Anne disappear beneath the house, Louis starts down the hall. The first room he finds is the ghost of what must have once been a bathroom. Most of the tiles seem to have been pulled off the wall, powder and dust spread over the concrete floor. The sink is cracked, as is the tub in the corner, the glass of the shower shattered and crinkling under Louis’ feet. There’s a bucket of water in the corner, a razor on the floor beside it. 

The next two rooms are empty, so dusty that stepping inside makes Louis’ head feel heavy, the mustiness of it cloying his senses completely. The last room is Harry’s. There’s hardly anything to it, the bed stripped bare of any sheets, a jumper screwed up at the head of it as what looks like a makeshift pillow. Clothes spill from a torn open backpack, and along the railing at the end of the bed, wet shirts hang, dripping dirty puddles onto the floor. 

Louis has never felt so invasive as he clicks the door shut behind him, stepping into the centre of the room. Mildew sticks itself into the corners of the walls, everything bathed in brown and yellow shadows, warmth slicing in between the slats of the boarded windows, directly into his eyes. There’s a notebook tucked beneath the jumper on the bed that Louis doesn’t dare touch, a broken radio on the floor beside the bed. 

He isn’t really sure what he’s searching for when he starts to rifle through the bag of clothes. Something that will fit them, a jumper for Daisy to keep her warm when it starts to cool down in later months, when they eventually get away from the red dirt and the plateaus. He’s almost dug to the bottom when his fingers brush paper, crinkled and soft. He pulls at it gently, and then there’s a faded envelope in his hands, yellow and fuzzy along the edges. It’s sealed shut now, but the corners are flicked up and ripped, the paper almost translucent at the top, like it’s been wet with saliva and resealed over and over again. 

It’s heavy, bumpy and thick, almost splitting at the sides. Louis carefully tucks his pinky under one of the loose flaps on the side, tearing it open delicately. When he manages to get it open, he wishes he’d never looked inside. It’s full of photos and letters, of what looks like pages of books that have been torn out, various handwriting and colours and textures. Some of the photos are stuck down on coloured paper, like they’ve been ripped from photo albums. His eyes glaze over before he can stop them, staring down at the tiny weight in his hands. He’s holding a person’s entire world in his palms. 

“Is this the part where you raid and run, then?”

Louis’ head turns so quickly a painful tremor flutters down his spine. Harry is standing in the doorway, hand still resting over the knob. Louis tries to respond, to let anything slip past his lips, but nothing comes. He can feel his face going red, can feel the embarrassed heat that’s dusting his cheeks, the shame that’s curling around his neck and beginning to suffocate him. 

In the daylight, all the strong, sharp lines of Harry’s face are soft, the intense moonlit shine in his eyes gone mellow and reserved. They’re green, mossy and dark in the crowded air of the bedroom. There’s a guardedness to his stance, water bottle held loosely against his chest, staring down at Louis with a slowly morphing fear, an anxiety that he’s tried to mask with a quip, with a sad, glazed smile. That’s fading away, though, and Louis can see it, can see the tick of his jaw when there’s a clatter from the living room, Niall’s voice floating down the hall. 

Louis stands, drops the envelope back into the bag as subtley as he can, even though it feels like he’s dropping a bomb, and wipes his sweaty hands against his shirt awkwardly.  

“That’s not–” he stops himself, because it’d be a lie to say that they weren’t about to take what they can and run. Steeling himself, Louis faces Harry fully, lifting his chin. “We just need fuel.” 

The way Harry’s brows fold together is a slow thing, the word that falls from his lips even slower. “Fuel?” 

“We’ve got a truck,” Louis says. “How do you think we got here from California?” 

Harry pauses, blinking. “You’ve what?”

“We have a truck,” Louis repeats. Harry’s mouth parts slightly, eyes gone calculating. “We ran out of gas a few miles back, walked the rest of the way up here. All we want is fuel and supplies, and we’ll be gone.” 

Louis is slowly becoming aware of just how hot the room is, morning sun bathing against the side of the house. Sweat is clinging behind Louis’ ears, along his top lip, the creases of his elbows and knees. He swallows against the stuffy air, swallows again when Harry runs a slow hand through his ragged hair, gradually breaking his gaze away to stare at the boarded windows, like he’s trying to see through to the outside, searching for some kind of clarity. In the tense silence that’s settled between them, Louis can hear Niall and Leigh-Anne moving, can hear the floor creaking.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Harry says softly, gaze still caught on the window, on the laser thin beams of gold that are hitting them. “You can have the fuel, and the food. You can take whatever you need to take.” 

Louis waits, both eyebrows raised. He waits, because there’s something more that Harry is trying to say, something more in the way he looks down at his feet, lips bitten into his mouth for a moment. When he finally glances back up, he looks so impossibly young for just a moment, hair in his eyes, so boyish that Louis almost walks right past him, to leave him alone and unbothered again. That moment passes though, and it leaves behind a hardness in Harry’s eyes, a determination faltered only by the nervous twitch of his fingers, of his jaw.

“But you have to take me with you,” Harry says, shaky. “You have to take me.” 

It’s almost pleading. Harry’s eyes are shiny, and he blinks, tucks his lips into his mouth again and looks away, looks at the empty room that engulfs them. Louis’ mind starts to wander instantly, starts to whisper a flurry of _protect, care, help_ in a whirlwind, and he has to close his eyes for a moment against it, against the pull of his heart that tells him to do what he knows is the right thing, because in this place the right thing to do can easily become the wrong thing. 

 _Do you trust him, though?_ A voice whispers, curled close to his ear. _Do you trust him enough to be around your sister?_

 _Does it matter?_ Louis thinks. They need the fuel, they need the food. They’ve got it right at their fingertips, have access to water that they can store. Harry is the key to getting them out of Arizona, to getting them into a safer city. He’d be a fool to say no, but even as he opens his mouth, he can’t help but feel like he’s making a mistake, every instinct he’s acquired since the beginning screaming at him to let this go, or to take the supplies anyway. 

“Alright,” Louis says. Harry’s eyes jump to him, almost startled, like he hadn’t expected that response. “You can come with us.” 

“Thank you,” Harry exhales, relief flooding his posture, his face.

“Don’t even think of crossing us,” Louis says. “And if you do _anything_ to-”

“I’d never,” Harry says firmly, but he looks ashen, staring at his toes. “I’d never do something like that, no matter the circumstance.”   

“Good,” Louis says. He rubs a hand over his neck, closes his eyes for just a moment and exhales. “Okay. Good.” 

“I, um. I don’t know how much fuel you’ll need,” Harry says, fiddling with his fingers. “It’s a long trip, to get that far east, and I can’t really promise that I have enou-”

“Wait, wait,” Louis interrupts, blinking slowly. “What do you mean? What do you mean by that?”

“By what?” Harry says. 

“Going east,” Louis grits out. 

“Oh,” Harry looks genuinely confused. “You’re not going to D.C?” 

“Of course not,” Louis shudders almost involuntarily. “Why would we go there?”

“When’s the last time you listened to a broadcast?” Harry says slowly, carefully. 

That surprises him. Louis almost laughs, a breathless thing that curls up his throat, but the apprehension in Harry’s eyes dampens it. “A long time.” 

“Louis, they’re–. They’re taking in kids,” Harry says, and all air is suddenly sucked away into a giant vacuum. 

“What?” Louis rasps. 

“The last broadcast I heard, they said they were taking kids in, vaccinating them,” Harry explains, but it’s all underwater, all fuzzy. “They’ve found a vaccine that works for children. They’re taking kids in at the D.C ward for treatment.” 

Louis has to sit down, then. He perches himself on the edge of the old bed and stares down at the stained floorboards, feeling as though his ribs are about to burst. “How long ago was this?” he asks dazedly.

“I–. I can’t be sure,” Harry trails off. 

“Fuck,” Louis breathes, putting his head in his hands. 

They’d been in California all that time, trapped in a fucking dome of bullshit and lies thinking they were safe, waiting for a rescue, for anything to happen, for vaccines and a cure that didn’t exist. The whole time they should have been across the country, never should have taken the bait of scrambling to the west coast, away from home. 

“I’m so sorry,” Harry babbles, finally coming forward into the room. “I didn’t mean to–. I just presumed–. You came from California and the only reason you’d cut through here would be to–”

Louis holds up a hand, and Harry stops, far too close, the proximity too much for Louis to handle right now. He thinks of everything they’ve been through the past few months, thinks of that first year when things had been so dire, the countless times they’d almost died just trying to survive without the military or the undead intervening. If they’d stayed close to Indiana none of it would have happened. California never would have happened. Daisy could be vaccinated and safe. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Louis bites out, pressing his fingertips into his eyes until he sees stars. He can feel Harry hovering and he’s ready to burst, each shuddery breath he lets in and out bringing him closer to tears. He won’t cry though, he refuses to, not in front of this stranger, this nomadic man who’s somehow managed to weasel his way into their plans. Finally, he brings his hands away from his eyes, places his palms down calmly onto his thighs, exhaling slow and soft. Harry looks stricken and uncomfortable, hair mussed from his fingers. “Why are you so insistent on coming with us? Why would you want to travel all that way? It’s going to be dangerous.” 

“Anywhere is better than here, and I–” Harry swallows wetly, blinking rapidly for a moment, “I’m sick of being on my own. I didn’t choose this.” 

 _None of us did_ , Louis thinks, _none of us asked for this._ They share a moment, chests both rising and falling steadily, trying to find an ounce of trust in the palpable space between them. 

“I didn’t choose this,” Harry repeats, a whisper this time. 

Louis stands slowly, fighting against the weight in his stomach, on his shoulders, on his heart, the smudge of a deep, jagged scar that’s never going to heal, that’s only just stopped weeping. 

“Let’s go, then,” Louis says, and Harry nods, frozen for a moment before he darts forward and starts to shove his clothes back into his bag with shaking hands. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and thus, the Mess begins
> 
> as always please feel free to leave me a comment or come say hi on tumblr, i've got a lil post [here](http://fondleeds.tumblr.com/post/171245142630/purple-rain-by-fondleeds-ive-got-the-same) that i'll update with chapters as i update this fic. 
> 
> right now i'm hOpefully planning to update every two weeks or so?? maybe less depending on when i have time to edit but fingers crossed i don't fall down into a sad void and avoid all my responsibility 
> 
> thanks 4 reading big love!!!!!!!! ♡ ♡ ♡


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The truck is a speck when he finally crouches down in the dirt, and here, just for a second, he pretends that he’s in the private of his room, that he’s home and something’s gone wrong and he can just cry without anyone else knowing, turn out the lights and tuck his head under the covers._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heey chapter two is here a little early because i managed to finish off another chapter during the week!! thanks so much for all the lovely messages u guys have been sending me about the first chapter, it really motivated me to put this fic at the front of my writing to-do list and i'm only a few chapters away from finishing :')
> 
> hope u enjoy this one!!!

 

Everything is dipped in a gooey blue darkness, stuck on his skin, wet on his cheeks. Outside, the streets are a mirage, bulbs of soft yellow, of tattered posters and oil-slick puddles, power lines snapped and drooping, an underlying hum to everything. There’s a candle shining in the corner of the room, slick and melting into a slow puddle, smelling more of plastic than anything else. 

“I’ll miss you when you’re gone,” Zayn says, but it’s an exhale, smoke wafting up between them thickly. Louis breathes it in, leans in close, eyes closed.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he murmurs, sucking in the smoke, fingers brushing Zayn’s wrist.

When he finally opens his eyes, they’re close. Things are dark but Zayn has always been so bright, the honey of his eyes so warm and smooth and Louis feels underwater, feels submerged and crushed in at the sides by a hot weight. 

“Louis,” Zayn whispers. Their lips might touch but Louis can’t tell. Zayn’s teeth are iced over with a silver, a moonlit glow. “You left me.” 

“No,” Louis shakes his head, their hair brushing together, Zayn’s fringe tickling his lashes. “No, I’d never.” 

Smoke passes between them again, so heady that when Louis blinks his eyes open Zayn looks like a mirage. They’re sitting by the water now, huddled together, and it’s completely dark, just the whites of Zayn’s eyes, the shiny wet reflecting off his cheeks. He draws another cigarette from his matchbox, just one left now, and it lights the moment he touches it, burns cherry red like a beacon, a tainted lighthouse watching the waves crash in front of him. The water has risen up to their waists.

“You left,” Zayn says, quieter than he’s ever been. 

“Z.” Louis tries to reach for his jaw but he never touches skin, finds that he can’t feel his own limbs either. 

“How could you leave me?” Zayn says, small and broken, all the tears on his face refusing to drip, slathered along his cheeks and his jaw in a shiny film, turning dark and rotten. 

Louis’ mouth tastes like tang and seawater, a panic gripping his spine, seeping through into the cracks between his ribs and wrapping long, spindly fingers around the bones there, pulling and pulling until he feels as though he’s about to burst. Zayn is crying now, but it’s turning thin and splintered, straining in a way that makes the hair on Louis’ arms stand up. Wet fingers find his elbows, wrap around his forearms.

“Louis,” Zayn sobs. There are holes in his cheeks, the sockets of his eyes gone dark and purple, rotting away, fingers wet with blood, slippery on Louis’ skin. 

“I’m sorry,” Louis whispers, frantic and hurt and full of wobbly tears, fear grasping at his throat. A wave slaps against their bodies, sprays burning foam against their cheeks.

“You said you’d never leave me,” Zayn rasps, but it isn’t his voice, it’s something broken and garbled. His skin is falling away, the bite on his shoulder weeping and tainting the water around them. Louis grips his arms tight, and when he moves his thumb away he’s pushed through to bone. Zayn shoves him, crawling closer, eyes glinting with something grotesque and wild, panic heaving his chest, and the next words are a broken shout, echoing up into the night as he lurches forward. “You fucking _promised!_ You said you’d never let–”

Louis’ eyes flick open.  

He doesn’t sit up gasping and clutching at his chest like he expects. It’s just a flicker of a moment, a passing between sleep and awake. His cheeks are wet though, the sky a blurry smudge of fading stars. Pressed against the side of the truck, things suddenly feel too claustrophobic for him to handle. 

Niall is up on watch, but he says nothing when Louis climbs out and starts to walk, arms crossed, fingers tucked up against his ribs. The truck is a speck when he finally crouches down in the dirt, and here, just for a second, he pretends that he’s in the private of his room, that he’s home and something’s gone wrong and he can just cry without anyone else knowing, turn out the lights and tuck his head under the covers. His breaths are shaky, and he brings the bottom of his shirt up to his face to wipe the wetness on his cheeks away, pushing down the bowling ball of blue weight that’s threatening to break through the cage of his ribs. 

It’s the first night he’s managed to fall asleep since it happened.

When he gets back to the truck, Harry is awake, head tilted towards him as he climbs back in. Niall has slipped inside, head on Leigh-Anne’s shoulder. 

“Are you alright?” Harry whispers. Louis fights the urge to snarl at him.

“I’m fine,” he says tersely. He turns away, knees curled to his chest. 

He’s not exactly prepared to spill his heart out to a stranger. To anyone. With a sigh, he pulls the matchbox from his left pocket, his stanley knife from his right. On the horizon, soft white is ebbing, so gentle it’s almost yellow, a fragile gradient only just beginning to mix with the navy of nighttime. Dawn is a shy creature, the sun hesitant to rise, to allow them another day. Louis rests his hands against his knees and slides the tiny, crumpled box open slowly, digging in his knife. 

“You’ve got cigarettes?” Harry asks, sitting up slowly. He sounds almost awed, blinking heavy and soft, sleep gritty in the corners of his eyes. 

“Just one.” Louis shakes the box gently. Harry sighs, flops onto his back and folds his arms over his stomach, looking up at where the moon still hovers. It startles a laugh out of Louis, and he lets it slip before he can stop it, bordering on incredulous. “What? Is that what you miss the most, is it?” 

“I miss weed,” Harry says flatly, and Louis laughs again, softer this time when Harry tilts his head to meet his gaze with a tiny smile, chin resting on his shoulder. Louis averts his eyes, and watches the gradual way Harry looks back up to the sky in his peripheral vision. “I wasn’t much of a smoker, but,” Harry shrugs, “it’s the little things you miss, I think. The insignificant things.” 

“Yeah,” Louis agrees softly, sliding the sharp edge of his knife in and out, trying to stop his brain from wandering into all those sentimental, overgrown places. “I guess.” 

They share a few minutes of silence. Louis runs his thumbs over the tiny lines along the inside of the box with his thumb, the faded pencil, ink that’s red and blue and purple, smudged or barely there or dug in. The frayed, sharp slots that he’s made. When he closes his eyes, he can feel felt-tip on his palms, can see tiny scribbles of flowers and stars and aliens sketched gently onto the backs of his hands, warm fingers wrapped loosely around his wrist. 

“Have you ever counted them?” Harry has sat up now, knees tucked up to his chest, wrists crossed, so that they’re almost mirroring each other. When Louis doesn’t respond, he dips his head, gesturing to the matchbox. “The days, I mean.” 

“No.” Louis shakes his head. He feels sick just at the thought of it. “I don’t want to.”

“I’ve got the same,” Harry says, pointer finger moving up and down in lazy, little lines as he talks. “In my notebook, I cross off each day. Write something down.”

“And what happens when you run out of pages?” Louis says, a little snarkier than he means it to be, slipping the matchbox closed. He can feel his ribs constricting, curling in to protect his chest. 

“Well,” Harry says softly, looking out to the emptiness, to the dry, dead earth. “I hope it doesn’t come to that.” 

They’re somewhere in New Mexico now, the only indication they’d crossed borders being the abandoned checkpoint that had stretched on endlessly, fences all broken through, holes cut along the bottom, empty military trucks turned onto their sides. Louis hadn’t expected anyone to be there, but the possibility of it had shaken him as they drove through last night, dusk settling over them and crowding them down to the ground, the shadows quiet and malicious, hiding possibilities. 

The air is warm already with the promise of a hot day, and the fluttering, sleepy blink of that white sunrise has morphed into a hard-edged wink, an orange fuzz shooting upwards. With all the supplies wrapped up in fraying, split rope, the bed of the truck is cramped and crowded. Only two of them can fit in here to sleep now. Louis can barely straighten his legs, Harry’s curled up closer to his chest, wincing when he shifts. It’s light enough now that they can start to drive, and Louis crawls forward slowly, sifts through their things until he finds the bags of ramen. 

The morning they’d left Arizona, he and Leigh-Anne had walked down to the truck with a jerry-can each, while Niall stayed back at the house with Daisy to make sure Harry didn’t try to pull anything on them. They’d filled up the tank in silence, trying not to look out towards the smoke, trying not to breathe too heavily, fire still crackling far away like smashed glass underfoot. Leigh-Anne had screwed the lid on top of her jerry-can, leant her back up against the truck, and cast a glance up to the hills.

“Do you trust him?” she said, eyes squinted against the sun. 

“No,” Louis answered. “I don’t. But maybe we should.”

“I guess we’ll see,” Leigh-Anne said. “Daisy seems to like him.”

Louis had closed his eyes briefly, Leigh-Anne’s fingers brushing his hip knowingly. “That’s what I’m worried about.” 

They’d gone down in pairs after that, hauling their supplies down to the truck, sifting through the bags and boxes of random, nondescript things that Harry had somehow managed to accumulate and fit in that tiny, broken house. None of them had realized what a goldmine they’d hit until they actually sorted through it all, through the matches and the rope and the cans of food, flashlights and batteries and bandaids. Harry had stood to the side with the skin of his pointer finger bitten between his teeth, feet anxiously brushing together. 

Now, as he splits his bundle of ramen and hands half to Harry, Louis can’t help but hear that teasing, jeering whisper that this is all too easy, that there’s no way they’ve managed to stumble across something like this without facing some kind of punishment. Maybe it’s just that he’s so used to terrible things happening all the time, one after the other with no room for even a breath, that the simple concept of some dry fucking noodles sparks him with unease. 

By early morning, they’re passing through a tiny town with barely anything left of it. Not in the way that it’s been caught among an aerial raid, between raining bullets and bombs; it’s ghostly, the silence of it, a place that’s been truly deserted since the beginning. The erosion of human life is clear, and the gurgled hum of the truck sounds obnoxiously loud as they roll through the street. Cars still parked in their driveways have their windows smashed in, paint scraped viscously from the doors, dry, scraggly weeds wrapping themselves around rotting fences and mailboxes. Doors hanging wide open, some off their hinges, shattered planks of wood littering the road, littering lawns, soaked in speckles of dried blood. 

The underlying stench of a dead world, the one that constantly coats the senses, becomes amplified in a place like this, places where there’s nothing else in the air to mask it. There’s only the whisper of something that once was, a flicker of civilisation in the picket fences and the lace curtains, in the spray painted walls that read _send help, send god_ , the stuffed bear in the gutter and the dirty, ripped blankets half buried among the dust. Louis keeps a firm grip on his shotgun, knees tucked against his chest as Niall drives them through slowly. 

When they come to a stop, Harry sits up immediately, looking over his shoulder at Niall with alarm, and then to Louis. “Why are we stopping?”

“Supplies,” Louis says, stretching his legs out with a wince as he begins to stand.

“But–,” Harry fumbles for a moment, jaw twitching. “Shouldn’t we just keep going? We’ve got enough.” 

“You can either come with us, or stay in the truck,” Louis says, vaulting over the side and landing with a wobbly _thud._ Leigh-Anne slides out beside him, gun already strapped around her shoulder. Louis slings his backpack on next, leveling Harry with a raised brow, trying not to feel anything at the white-knuckled grip he’s got on the edge of the truck, the ansty way he’s teething at his full bottom lip. “Your choice.” 

Leigh-Anne sets off, treading quietly up to the first house in the street, Louis close behind. It takes Harry ten seconds to scramble out of the truck and follow, clumsily lowering himself to the ground and kicking up a cloud of dust. His gun is slung over his shoulder loosely, and he ambles towards them in a nervous half-run, head ducked. Daisy watches from the window of the truck, half in Niall’s lap. 

“Sorry,” Harry murmurs. Louis says nothing, following Leigh-Anne through the already parted door. 

The first few houses are all empty and barren, already stripped away almost completely, furniture overturned, couch cushions either missing or with the foam pulled out entirely, curtains ripped down, kitchen cupboards filled with nothing but dust. Leigh-Anne finds a cluster of sheets shoved under one of the beds, stained and ruined, but they look usable, something to use when it gets colder and they need extra layers. 

They duck silently through doors, splitting into different rooms to search. Harry is a silent, steely presence, mechanical in his movements. Louis can understand that, though. They’re tearing through somebody’s old life, ripping up carpet and rugs and dipping their fingers into every nook. It’s invasive, and Louis still has those moments of pause, waiting for sirens to echo up into the silence, for flashing lights to come and stop them. Nobody ever comes. 

They’ve crossed the street now, working up the other side of the parallel, empty husks, almost back to the truck. The fence of the house they’re in front of has collapsed entirely, pickets dislodged and shattered amongst overturned soil. There are holes in the walls around the window sills, and mildew and mold crawl with desperate, thin fingers up the walls, the paint on the wood paneling all peeled and grimy. Leigh-Anne is paused just in front of the stoop, and she raises her gun slowly, looking back to Louis, who’s sifting his way through the back seats of the van in the driveway. 

Harry is on the opposite side, rifling through the glove box. He makes a tiny sound in the back of his throat, nose scrunching as he extracts what looks like the plastic case of a cassette. It looks tiny and fragile in his hands, and he flips it over slowly, thumbs brushing away the grime that covers the front. Leigh-Anne is still paused at the door, and the look in her eye makes Louis’ skin go taut, bumps rising along the back of his neck. A soft breeze blows through, and carried with it on the hot wind, is the smell of a rotting body. 

Harry pauses, too, the two of them slowly becoming aware of just how still everything truly is, aware of the pulsing tension in their surroundings. Louis slowly crawls back out onto the driveway and holds his gun steady in his palms, Harry following suit and tucking the cassette into his back pocket. Louis watches him do it, watches a shadow of what could almost be guilt sweep over Harry’s face as he looks up. When they come to stand either side of Leigh-Anne, a thick sludge settles in Louis’ stomach. 

“We should just leave,” Harry says quietly. The skin on his necks looks sticky, the swallow that follows his words shaky and thick. 

“No, we shouldn’t,” Leigh-Anne says, gun still raised. “There could be something in there we need.”

“What if there isn’t?” Harry says, short of breath. “What if–”

“What if? What if?” Leigh-Anne snaps. “You think every single thing that happens to us isn’t based on meaningless _what if’s_?” 

Harry flushes immediately and takes a slow step backwards, eyes flicking nervously from Leigh-Anne to Louis. He looks completely terrified, looks that way Louis feels on the inside but doesn’t want to show. Louis has to stop himself from reaching out and brushing a hand along the bone of Harry’s wrist, from sitting him down on the curb with a hand on his back. With a sigh, Leigh-Anne starts forward, cautious with her steps, and Louis follows. Harry trails after them with his arms looped around his stomach. 

All of the windows have been smashed in from the outside, and the glass tinkles softly under their feet as they walk through. The smell is so foul that Louis can feel his stomach curling into a tighter knot of nausea with every step. The sun falls into the kitchen, dust ignited and drifting into the living room, a soft, honey light splaying itself over the dried blood that’s caked on the carpet. In the corner, the television is broken and lopsided, every bit of furniture displaced or toppled or tampered with. 

The silence is as cloying as the wet rot that’s pressing itself against Louis’ nose, and he covers it with the back of his hand as they tread carefully towards the staircase. At the top of the landing, he hears Harry intake a shaky, quiet breath. Louis glances over his shoulder, meets Harry’s shiny eyes, still lingering a few steps lower, face pale and sickly. The stench of decay matches the state of the walls, of the doors hanging half off their hinges, thick like a fog.

Louis isn’t surprised when they find the body. What does surprise him is the relief that it brings, sickly and so wrong that he can feel the bile clogged in his throat at the thought, at the _thankfulness_ he feels that it’s just a body, a woman. Or what used to be. They have no way of knowing how long she’s been here, but the colour of her skin, the rancid grime and blood that’s dried and cracked around her limbs, the gauges made by teeth in her neck and face, tells him enough. It’s enough. 

The moment Harry spots the body, he flees the room, and the abruptness of it sends Louis’ heart spiking, the thunder of Harry’s retreating footsteps down the stairs so loud in the stillness. Leigh-Anne flinches, her own eyes watery and squinted against the stench. All the air in the room is clogged with summer heat and death. Outside, through the half-smashed window, the sky is so clear, not a cloud dotting the expanse of blue, and it feels so pure and so far away somehow, so impossibly removed from the mauled body in front of them. 

“Christ,” Leigh-Anne murmurs under her breath. Her eyes are closed now. Louis grabs her gently by the elbow to lead her back downstairs. 

Harry is standing in the middle of the driveway when they step back out into the sunlight. He’s got one hand on his hip, the other curled loosely at the stomach, eyes shut, head tilted down. Under the hot beam of the sun, his hair is streaked with bronzey-gold, the light sunburn under his eyes flared up, all warm toned and bright. His face, though, is ashen and pale. 

Leigh-Anne marches ahead, determined in her strides back towards the truck, where Daisy is already out the door and waiting for them, Niall perched behind her. Louis lingers, sliding up beside Harry.

“Are you alright?” he says. Harry flinches away, flicks his eyes out to the desert. They’re misty. 

“Fine,” Harry sniffs, that same terseness that Louis had given him at dawn echoed. “Just–. The smell.” 

They stand in silence for a beat, Harry’s stance hostile and distant, curled in on himself. He’s obviously somewhere else, the same way that Louis gets pulled out of reality sometimes. Louis doesn’t crowd him, doesn’t get close and ask what’s wrong, what’s in his head, because if Harry tried that with him he’d push him away immediately. Whatever it is, whatever Harry is stuck on, it’s turned him docile and shaken, and he follows Louis wordlessly back to the truck, offering only a weak smile to Daisy when she greets them. 

They huddle together in the truck bed, all five of them, knees curled to their chests as they eat. The metal of it stings the bare skin of his legs, eyes burning at the broiling reflection that’s cast upwards. Daisy’s fingers are sticky with flavouring, mouth stained yellow from it, leaving smudges on the already dirty pages of _Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland._ She’s got it propped open on her grazed knee, fingers spread awkwardly over the pages to keep it open while she eats, tiny ramen crumbs getting stuck in the margin. 

“I feel too sick to eat,” Leigh-Anne says, picking small slithers away bit by bit and popping them between her dry lips. “I always think I’ll get used to it, but. Fuck, it could’ve been me, y’know?” 

“But it wasn’t,” Niall says firmly. “That’s all that should matter.” 

“I know,” Leigh-Anne says, though her face is still troubled, lips pulled into her mouth. “I don’t know what would be worse, turning or being left like that to rot away.” 

“I don’t think death is measured that way,” Harry says softly, knees to his chest, eyes on his toes. It’s the first thing he’s said since he’d climbed back into the truck. “The undead are still dead, and an immune person who can’t turn is just as dead as that when they go. One isn’t better than the other.” 

“But if you’re immune and dead, at least you can’t kill anyone else,” Niall says. “If you’re undead, you–”

“Hey,” Louis says, quiet but sharp enough to stop the conversation. Daisy has curled into his side, tearing at the edges of her book absently, an arm around her stomach, and he can sense her unease, can see the shine in her eyes that she tries to blink away before anyone else notices. 

“C’mere, Dais,” Niall says, arms open wide. She crawls towards him, lays her head on his stomach and closes her eyes when he starts to untangle her hair gently. “It’s alright.” 

Harry sucks in a deep breath, and Louis watches the shaky rise of his chest, the way the soft skin of his cheek bunches up against his knee when he rests against it, looking out to the distance with his eyes half-closed, brows furrowed softly. Their gazes meet, just for a moment, and Harry doesn’t break away at first. Louis sees it, then, the slithers of fear and exhaustion that he knows he wears himself. Just for that beat, they’re open to each other, until Harry closes his eyes and tilts his head forward, nose tucked between his knees. 

-

Louis can feel his cheeks burning. Sharp pin-pricks of sun rays are sinking their teeth into the already gleaming skin of his shins. There’s nowhere to hide sprawled like this, the rusting metal of the truck drawing the sunlight in and caging it against their bodies, searing and white-hot when they press their palms down. Leigh-Anne is driving now, whipping up clouds of dust as they speed along the deserted road, Niall leant against the opposite window. Daisy is tucked between them, feet on the dash in their usual position, tapping together. 

Louis squints against the glare of the glass, then turns his head back around, eyes scrunching further against the dirt and the hazy heat wavering outstretched behind them, chasing them down. It’s been completely silent since they left off, and his tongue feels stuck to the roof of his mouth, dry from disuse and dehydration, an ache blooming at the base of his skull. 

Beside him, Harry looks to be almost asleep. He’s got a sheet tucked over his head to shield himself from the sun, long legs extended awkwardly around the piles of supplies at the foot of the truck bed. A mottled scar runs along the underside of his calf, pink and fleshy. Despite the sheet, the awkward, longer stands of his hair whip around his jaw and cheeks, the short tufts of it shivering in a flurry. His eyes are closed, lashes almost translucently gold against the sunlight, shadows stuck to the column of his throat and his neck, hugging the faded tattoos on his wrist and his arms. The sunburn under his eyes has flared up, sticky and red. 

Since the silence settled around them, it’s hung heavy and awkward and refuses to budge. Louis doesn’t know why he can’t shake the cautiousness he feels around him, but he can’t stop himself from glancing at him every now and then, letting his eyes linger on his grazed knees and the knobs of his elbows, the cursive names inked into his skin, wondering where he’s come from and what’s led him here. Maybe it’s because he’s been around the same few people for so long that he feels compelled with the need to sink and prod at this newness, exhausted from hiding away, on the verge of letting himself collapse all too quickly. 

Maybe it’s because of something else, something that curls a sticky panic in his stomach and drags phantom, familiar fingertips along the back of his neck in a soft, lingering whisper. 

When Harry turns his head and opens his eyes slowly, glancing up at Louis from under hooded, tired lids as if to say _what, what are you looking at_ , Louis snaps his gaze away, out to the endless extension of desert and dry, cracked ground, the dead stiffness of the shrubs and the lifeless stretch of the horizon, clamping down on the twitch in his fingers, the intrinsic urge to explore and uncover and rifle through things he has no right to touch.

The travel is exhausting. Louis’ head feels full of lead, his headache pressing against his temples and the crown of his head, the truck rattling and vibrating when he tries to lean against it. He doesn’t remember much from when they left California. He doesn’t remember much from that time at all, really, almost like he lost himself for those hours, until suddenly he’d been slamming on the breaks and sending them spinning, jolted back into reality in a panic, fingers shaking when Niall had grabbed the wheel because Louis had let go, already trying to topple out of the truck to vomit, trying to stop his eyes from burning because Daisy was watching with her knees curled into her chest, cheeks blotchy and red because she hadn’t stopped crying since they left. 

The last time they’d traveled anywhere near the distance they’re trying to go now, it had just been him and Daisy still, and they’d been shoved into an army plane, into a horrid, gaping pit that rattled and shook dangerously. They’d been crowded together and sitting on the metal floor, not even strapped in because there weren’t enough harnesses along the walls. He can remember that, at least, clenching his eyes shut for the entire ride, arms wrapped around Daisy’s shoulders as they were lifted out of one hell and dropped into another, into the dry franticness of the west coast, where the promise of new vaccines and treatments and safety turned from a dreamy reality to a drawn out, tired haze of waiting for nothing. 

The old vaccines had stopped the initial sickness from being passed on. It wasn’t viral anymore. But it couldn’t stop what happened after a bite, something so beyond human that they couldn’t hope to treat it. 

It’s late afternoon when Louis swaps places with Leigh-Anne, dirt tucked under his nails and gritty in his lashes, a fine powder of it floating from his hair when he shakes it out, climbing out of the truck bed on shaky legs. She’s got her arms crossed, and she presses a begrudged kiss to Daisy’s forehead as she slips out with a huff, eying the back of Harry’s head through the dust-caked glass, mouth pulled into a thin line. Louis just sighs and rubs his knuckle against the corner of his eye, fighting against the pulsing ache that’s pushing between his brows now, starting to make him nauseous. 

He’s got his window down, half leant out of it as he drives, grateful to have the wind coming at him instead of pushing him from behind this time, making his eyes go watery and clear. The sun drags a lazy circle over them, the beginnings of an orange blush creeping up on the line of the horizon, the first breath of sunset waking up. 

“Can _I_ sit in the back?” Daisy asks, all pleading and whiny and so young, stretching her body around to peer longingly out at Harry and Leigh-Anne, who appear to be sitting in a steely silence. 

“No,” Louis and Niall say in unison, their eyes not wavering from the road. 

Daisy huffs and throws herself back against her seat, crossing her arms over her chest, then leans harshly into Niall’s side, grumpy as she slides her feet noisily along the dash, purposeful and petulant. The holes in her toes are growing larger, the fabric gaping, socks stained with red and brown dust.

“You need to stop doing that to your shoes,” Louis says, sterner that he means to be, thumb rubbing harshly over his temple. 

“I can’t help it,” she snaps, a quick, biting thing. They glare at each other for a moment, before Louis just sighs and clenches his jaw. 

He allows himself quick glances at the jagged rearview mirror. The first time, Leigh-Anne is staring resolutely outward, arms remaining crossed over her chest. Harry’s head is slumped on his shoulder, the sheet still over his head, a fluidly to the way his shoulders jostle when they run over bumps and potholes that makes it look as though he’s asleep. Slowly, though, they seem to warm up to each other. It’s when he hears Leigh-Anne laugh, full bodied and snorting like she hasn’t done in forever, carried hushed and bright on the wind, that Louis’ skin starts to prickle. Harry has sat up, and they’re talking animatedly, whatever they’re discussing bringing smiles over both their faces. 

Louis’ fingers tighten gradually around the wheel, Leigh-Anne’s voice echoing around his head like a slow siren, a mantra of _do you trust him–do you trust him–do you trust him_ , that voice turning low and grating, the pulse of pain between his brows pushing harder and harder. His skin feels tight around his temples, and when Leigh-Anne laughs again, he has to close his eyes against the throb of it. 

Daisy is glaring up at him, and she elbows his side lightly, lips curled up, eyes something fierce. She looks so much like their mom. 

“I want to hang out with Harry,” is what she says. Louis refuses to meet her eye.

“We’ve just met him,” he says. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“But he’s nice to us!” Daisy says, a sudden explosion as she sits forward, and her voice is already wobbling, so much so that Louis does glance at her now, blinking against the raise in her voice, the strain in it. “Nobody has ever been nice to us like Harry except Zayn, and you didn’t even let me say good _bye_. You didn’t let me-”

Louis slams on the breaks.

Everything jolts and squeals, dust flicking up in a huge cloud as the tires drag. Niall almost hits the dash, and he can already hear Leigh-Anne cursing him out, her and Harry gripping onto the sides of the truck bed desperately, covered in a thin film of powdery dirt, coughing against it. Daisy is clinging to his arm, soft eyes gone saucer-wide and full of shaky tears, but Louis shrugs her off and kicks the door of the truck open, hands already shaking. There’s a terrible, raging calm that’s settled over him, and he clenches his teeth together against the hurt look on Daisy’s face, the flush of embarrassment and apology that’s already creeping onto her cheeks.

“Go on, then,” he says tightly, eyes prickling. “Get out.” 

“Lou, I’m–”

“Get _out,_ Daisy,” Louis says, a huff of breath that almost becomes a sob before he manages to swallow it, his chest ballooning with the pressure of trying to hold it down. 

They’re in the middle of nowhere, and the silence of it presses in from all sides, the dust still floating up and around them in a blur, seeping into Louis’ lungs and rattling along his ribs. Daisy is crying when she slips out of the truck gingerly, fingers twisted together, shoulders curled in. He wipes a hand over his face. 

“I’m so sorry, Lou,” she keeps repeating, over and over as Louis lifts her into the truck, Leigh-Anne watching him carefully. “I didn’t mean it, I promise I didn’t mean it. I didn’t. I _didn’t_ –”

“I know, sweetheart,” Louis says tiredly, hands gentle on her back, rubbing. He feels like he’s about to deflate entirely, bones hollow husks on the verge of wearing away. “I know you didn’t.” 

Harry is staring down at him, and when Louis meets his eye he has to look away immediately, feeling too exposed and awful, feeling too aware that he’s being horrible but just can’t stop himself. He just needs to breathe, to try and block out the hazy, golden images that are fluttering through his memory, of the sun and the beach and lullabies, of tattooed hands tucking Daisy in to bed, of a metal pipe caked in blood and wide, owlish eyes. 

He climbs back into the truck, fingers fumbling for the keys for so long that he lets out agitated huff, hitting his arm out against the door in frustration, chest heaving. Everything is going fuzzy and distant. It feels like his eardrums are about to burst, ballooning and muffling Niall’s voice, so close and soft.

“Louis,” he’s saying, calm and steady, over and over. “Louis, you’re not driving. Move.”

“No,” Louis rasps, finally getting the engine to roar to life, jolting them forward when his foot comes down clumsily on the accelerator. “I can do it, okay? I can fucking do it.” 

They barely make it a hundred metres before Louis has to stop, hands trembling when he pulls his fringe out of his eyes, biting so hard on his bottom lip that he tastes metal. Niall’s eyes are shiny, and he says nothing when Louis slides along the seat, allowing him to climb to the drivers side. The glands of his throat feel entirely swollen, so much so that it’s difficult to breath, but he’d rather choke than let out the reservoir of tears brimming behind the thin film of his eyes. 

“Just get some rest, alright?” Niall whispers, taking Louis’ hand. His fingers are rough and scarred, but he’s warm, his pulse steady, and Louis latches onto that, thankful even through the broken scatter of his mind right now that he has somebody like Niall to anchor him, to try and pull him back into the present. “Try and sleep. We’ll stop soon.” 

Louis curls himself up against the door, knees under his chin. When they start moving again he closes his eyes and tucks his face away, trying to keep out the oranges and yellows that flash on the edges of his vision, sunflares that carry a different kind of heat, the warm, hurtful blossom of a memory cradled in the cold spots in Louis’ chest. He blinks drowsily out to the horizon, stomach still twisting and holding a dark blue weight. Harry is watching him in the wing mirror. 

-

When Louis wakes, it’s because the sun is piercing directly into his eyes, gold flaring up and frosting his lashes and eyebrows in warmth. He squints against it and ducks his head, sunspots of amber and brown flickering in his vision. Dusk is settling like a dirty sheet around them. The sky is wrinkled with thin clouds of fuschia and deep bronze, and chasms of shadow hug the underside of the large, pillowy masses crawling in slowly from the west. Rain. 

His cheeks feel dewy, and when he touches a tentative finger to them and realizes they’re wet, he wipes at his eyes subtly, clawing at the edges of his brain to try and remember his dream. There’s nothing there, though, just a blue weight in his chest that’s slowly beginning to melt away under the harsh sunlight. Sitting up slowly, he blinks against the lingering mistiness and winds down the window. They’re surrounded by giant, golden fields.

“Where are we?” Louis murmurs roughly. He clears his throat. 

“Texas,” Niall says. “Panhandle, I think.” 

“Checkpoint?”

“Empty.” 

“Right,” Louis breathes, rubbing his hands over his face and slowly drawing his knees up. He can see Niall glancing at him every few seconds, and he sighs, letting his head drop back against the headrest. “I fucked up.”

“Yeah,” Niall shrugs. “But we’ve all fucked up. I don’t really think fuck ups even count anymore.”

“Ever the optimist,” Louis mutters, picking at the loose skin by his thumb, wincing as he peels it down, the skin underneath fleshy and pink and sore. “I shouldn’t have lashed out at her like that. She’s just a kid.” 

“She is just a kid,” Niall says. “But she’s bright, and she loves you. You shouldn’t have lashed out, yeah, but the fact that you did doesn’t make you a shitty brother. It makes you human. You’ve got feelings too, and you don’t always have to try and hide them from her to protect her.” 

“I know,” Louis says. “I just, like. I just want her to be happy, and I feel like we’re never going to get there. I feel like–”

“Lou,” Niall cuts him off gently. “Stop.”

Louis stops. 

They slow eventually, gradually rolling off the road and into the long, dry grass, a silhouette of a town in the distance. Amarillo, maybe. He’s never been very good at geography. With a wince, he slides out of the truck and stretches, back aching from being slumped against the window. The sunset is a copper rust now, flaky and fluttering down on them softly. 

When he rounds the truck cautiously, guilt stirring his stomach, Daisy is fast asleep, her head pillowed on Harry’s thighs. Her feet are slung over Leigh-Anne’s lap, and on her chest, her book is still open and sliding up to her neck, head lolled to the side like she’s fallen asleep mid-sentence. Harry has a hand in her hair, brushing baby wisps back idly, but as soon as Louis leans his arms over the truck, he lifts it away and brushes his own hair back nervously, cheeks tinted. 

“Um,” Harry starts.

Daisy blinks her eyes open. “I need to pee.”

She announces this loudly and without any preamble, sitting up with a whiny groan as her back cracks. Louis laughs softly and hangs his head, watching her vault awkwardly out of the truck, kicking up dust. 

“Come on, then,” Leigh-Anne sighs, following after her with a fond roll of her eyes. 

Louis watches them go, walking up the lane of a deserted house, Daisy’s fingers trailing through the overgrown, brown grass that’s rustling gently. Always, an anxious buzz starts in his fingers when they disappear from sight, rounding the back of the house. He can feel Harry staring at him.

“I’m, um,” Harry fumbles, brushing his hair back again, shaky. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Louis sighs and rests his arms on the rusted truck, leaning his chin against them and peering up through sunspots. 

“No, really,” Harry continues earnestly. “I’m not trying to–”

“Harry, seriously,” Louis says. He closes his eyes, listening to the little puff of breath that Harry exhales. When he blinks his eyes open again he looks out across the fields, where everything is bathed in the dipped sun, shadows slanting long and warm towards them. He looks out so he doesn’t to look back at the man in front of him, at knobby, grazed elbows and wild hair and puffy lips, leant on the edge of the truck beside him with such openness and sincerity that Louis feels himself almost turning inside out. He doesn’t even know what Harry’s apologizing for. 

Once Daisy and Leigh-Anne are back, they eat quietly, snapping bundles of dry ramen into halves. They let Daisy have hers with half a bottle of water, and she slurps at it happily, her back against the edge of the truck bed. The last of the sun is hitting her from behind, lighting all her fly away hairs in a shimmery gold, turning the sunburn on her shoulders and cheeks ruby and dark. She’s tapping her feet together, toes poking up out of the holes. 

She shifts forward to put the bowl down, and as she does so, the light that was trapped behind her beams forward into Louis’ eyes, and with it, he’s cast backwards into the hazy bright of a lost memory, of years and years ago, of summer in Florida, when Daisy and Phoebe were five and had matching pink bathing suits, their mouths and cheeks smudged with watermelon. It had been sunset, one similar to this, but the sky was purple and pink and a fairytale, the sun refusing to set and skimming white-hot across the tips of the waves. Mom is there, too, Fizzy’s head in her lap. Lottie is still playing in the water, and mom leans over to him, holds out a slice of watermelon and says _have some, darling_ , and things are sticky and sweet and comfortably warm, and–

“Louis,” Niall is quiet, careful, but Louis’ eyes still dart up, sweat gathered on his neck and his top lip, breathing heavily. Niall’s hand is on his knee. 

“Sorry, what,” he blurts, taking a painful, obnoxious bite of ramen, the dry of it cutting at his gums. 

Niall squeezes his knee. He looks concerned, always. “I asked if you wanted first watch tonight, or if you want me to do it.”

“I’ll do it,” Louis says, not looking up. He can taste blood, and he runs his tongue along the front of his teeth, feeling bile rise into his throat when he swallows soggy ramen down. 

He starts to cough, dry but somehow wet, a clogged thing, and Harry’s hand is on his back before Louis can blink, a bottle of water pressed to his lips.

“Hey,” Harry says, soft, leaning too close, so close the wild hair of his fringe brushes Louis’ temple. “Stop, c’mon. Drink.”

His hand is overbearingly warm through the thin shirt Louis is wearing, and instinctively he leans away from the touch, grasping at the bottle and taking it right from Harry’s hands. Gulping wetly, Louis keeps his eyes down, a flurry of heat flushing up against his neck and behind his eyes, stomach quivering as he swallows down warm water. 

“Thanks,” he manages to choke out. Harry just blinks at him, and finally, pulls himself back to an appropriate distance for Louis’ brain to handle. 

Sunset is a slow, lucid thing tonight. It takes forever to pull itself downwards, and when it does, with one last feeble, orange wave, Louis’ eyes feel dry and lined with sand, knees curled up to his chest on the hood of the truck. Daisy is already passed out inside, sweat gathered along her temples and in the burnt handlebars of her collarbones, limbs loose and lazy and face bunched up. Leigh-Anne keeps pressing a gentle hand over her forehead and Louis tries not to watch, just hopes that she doesn’t wake up with heat-stroke and a queasy stomach. 

Niall’s out cold, too, face pressed against the glass of the window, and behind them, in the truck bed, Harry is curled up among a pile of dirty blankets and rope, head pillowed on a soft, worn paperback. Every so often, he murmurs something in his sleep, and the low hum of his voice carries like a whistle with the breeze that’s drawing towards them. West, the clouds are closer now, obscuring the thick gathering of stars and leaving gaping holes of grey. 

By the time he’s switched with Niall, and Niall has switched with Harry, Louis’ mind feels like it’s running both at a hundred miles a minute and one step per hour, stretched so thin but scraping so quickly forward that everything is blurry and sharp and a gigantic muddle. Curled in the back of the truck bed, there are goosebumps making his skin go taut despite the hot air from the day lingering, and he can almost taste the rain on his tongue, that earthly smell of wet dirt and shrub lingering in the distance. 

Harry is just a silhouette against the open sky from where he leans against the bonnet, body silvered and shadowed against the dirty windshield. He looks like a smudge, two panes of glass and darkness separating them, but Louis can see enough, can see his odd posture and the way his ankles are crossed awkwardly, his gun leant lopsided on the windshield, and either side of him, the sky is open and full with shiny stars, all of it bathed in the gentle blue of a half-moon. 

Things around them look alien and liminal. Despite the gentle rustle of the fields, it’s so stunningly still, like the world is frozen and waiting for them to catch up, like the world has hidden itself in the nighttime and only then is it vulnerable and trusting enough to let them see it. When the sun comes back up, brutal and burning the memory of these nights away, Louis can already imagine the stickiness of it, the smell. He curls himself into a tighter ball, presses his cheek into the ribbed metal of the truck bed and closes his dry eyes. 

He’s almost drifted off, a feat in itself, when he hears Daisy’s voice, whisper soft and tentative.

“Harry?” she says, her head poking out the window of the truck, somehow managing to wind it down without Louis hearing. That blue weight is in his chest again, and he realizes for a moment that maybe the creak of the window is what pulled him from the watery surface of a dream. 

Harry flinches at her voice, turning abruptly to face her, face obscured from Louis’ vision by the frame of the truck, all lit up in silver. He hesitates, and there’s a pregnant pause between them, before he replies with a tentative, soft, “Yeah?” 

“Can I come up there with you?” she whispers, and Louis can hear the wobble in her voice, a little reedy, the way she gets when she clings to Louis’ hand or feels sick or just needs gentle fingers in her hair, just needs reassurance. Usually, she’d curl into Louis’ side for that, and something sticky curdles in his stomach when Harry reaches a hand out to her.

“Sure, Dais,” he says, still with that tentative, withdrawn lilt. Louis watches him help Daisy out through the window, supporting nearly all her weight and managing to lift her by the underarms onto the bonnet, the metal only popping and protruding once, quietly, as she shifts her weight, knees instantly up to her chest. 

Harry is watching her carefully, and he touches her back gingerly with light fingers, all blue. “Are you alright?” 

Daisy shrugs, but it’s shaky. Louis can practically see the defiant pout that’s bound to be curling her mouth, a brave, thin line. She tucks her hair back from her face irritably, come entirely loose from her braids now and hanging drooped along her sticky cheeks. It’s silent for a long time, Harry’s hand rubbing slow circles over Daisy’s thin shoulder blades, her forehead pressed against her knees. Then, with one thin, shuddery breath, she starts to sniffle, and Harry is there, tucking her into his ribs.

“ _Hey-hey-hey_ ,” he whispers. “Dais, it’s okay. You’re okay.”

“Sorry,” she whines, miserable, the word coming out as three separate syllables, released with each shudder of her hiccuping chest. “I feel really sick.” 

“Do you want me to get Louis?” Harry says. Instinctively, Louis slips his eyes closed, a hot spike of panic shooting up his spine at the thought of being caught watching them.

“No, please don’t,” Daisy says, still with that same shuddery release of words. “I want him to sleep. He never sleeps.” 

“Okay, love,” Harry says. “Then you’ve gotta tell me what’s wrong, yeah? Do you want some water?”

“No,” she moans. “Just, my tummy hurts, and my neck is all sweaty and it was too hot in there. I think–. I think I’m gonna barf.” 

Harry reacts like a bullet, sliding off the bonnet and bringing Daisy with him. They’re obscured from view, but Louis can still hear the wet, grating sound of Daisy vomiting, whimpering, the soft hum of Harry’s reassurances, the swear he lets slip under his breath when she starts up again. Louis is about to sit up, his own stomach curdling at the sound, at the thought of Daisy lent against the rusty bullbar in the blue-dark, quivering.

“Dais, I need to get Louis,” Harry says, a frantic whisper as she vomits again, a dry retch this time. 

“Please don’t,” she rasps. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Harry says, and he sounds frantic, voice thin and shaky. “Just–. Just stay crouched down, alright? I’ll get you some water, love. There you go, breathe.” 

Harry doesn’t even notice that Louis is awake when he rounds the back of the truck and fumbles for a half-empty bottle. Louis sees him though, the shiny wet of his eyes, chest tight with panic and something else, a visible, aching worry that Louis feels, too. It’s quiet again, Louis unable to hear what Harry is whispering, but he hears Daisy cough as she drinks, hears her sniffles, the scuff of dirt as they slowly stand again, as Harry lifts Daisy gently back up onto the bonnet, rubbing his palms over her shins, along her ribs, up and down her back when he climbs back up, too. 

“Sorry,” Daisy wipes her eyes with her palms, miserable and embarrassed and clearly flustered, tucking her hair back behind her ears almost frantically.  

“Don’t apologize, it’s okay,” Harry says, calm and gentle. Then he reaches for her, grasps her thin, knobby wrists in his own thin fingers, pulling them gently away from the wild tufts of her hair. “Calm down, Dais.” 

She goes pliant when he starts to brush her hair with his fingers, and she hands him her hair tie wordlessly. They’re blue silhouettes outlined in shiny silver. Louis watches with his breath held in his chest as Harry slowly attempts to braid Daisy’s hair, muttering an earnest _sorry_ each time he tugs a knot and Daisy’s shoulders twitch, taking his time to thread each layer over the other. He starts to hum under his breath, low and in his chest, and Daisy’s shoulders are slumping, relaxing back slowly into Harry’s body. 

“That’s nice,” she says. “You have a nice voice, Harry.”

“Thank you,” Harry says. “It’s a Beatles song.” 

“Can you sing it again?”

“Sure.” 

Louis’ eyes are so dry, burning from being kept open, and when he finally slips them shut, they go water-clogged and heavy instantly, droplets beading in the corners of his lids. Harry’s still humming, and he makes a soft noise of content, finishing the song.

“Look at that,” he says, mock-proud. “That’s my best one yet. You look like a mermaid.” 

Daisy giggles shyly. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Harry says, and there’s a rustle, his soft release of breath as Daisy no doubt latches herself against his side, nose tucked into his ribs. 

“Do you know any constellations?” Daisy asks.

“Um, not really,” Harry laughs softly. Then, brighter, “Wait, I think I see one!”

“Where?” Daisy breathes, delighted.

“Right there,” Harry says. “It’s a rabbit, see?”

“No?”

“Right _there!_ ”

“You’re making it up,” Daisy is laughing, full belly giggles that she’s trying to hush.

Harry gasps. “Daisy, _darling_ , I’d never lie to you.” 

“Harry,” she giggles again. “You’re a mushroom.” 

“You’re a rabbit,” Harry counters weakly, not even an insult, but it has Daisy in stitches.

Louis drifts off like that, listening to their whispered quips, to Harry making up constellations and telling stories about rabbits and princes and comets, Daisy breathing soft and slow and laughing into the still night.

-

He wakes to a raindrop hitting him right in the eye, and he sits up, blinking against it and wincing. His hair is damp on his forehead, a light mist hovering, the outer band of cloud starting it’s shadowy descent over them. The air is sticky, a muggy, gross weight, and Louis’ fingers are slippery with it, dirt sticking gluggy and dark to his shoes when he climbs out of the truck bed. 

Daisy is asleep on the bonnet, a loose flannel, one of Harry’s, slung over her shoulders and face, body curled thin and fragile into Harry’s side, her shielded head practically stuck under his armpit and ribs. Harry is sprawled awkwardly, neck resting at the most painful looking angle, and he’s sound asleep, chest rising and falling in deep, measured slopes. Leigh-Anne and Niall are still inside the truck, dry and safe. Which means that Harry fell asleep without waking Leigh-Anne up, and because of that, Louis didn’t wake up after Leigh-Anne.

They’ve slept through the entire night without anyone looking out. 

Before the true fire of annoyance can spark in Louis’ belly and ignite, Daisy shifts, fabric rustling as she gently pulls Harry’s flannel off her head, blinking blearily up at the sky, shirt damp and clinging to her, making her look so thin and frail. Slowly, her head tilts towards Louis. It reminds him of when she was little, really little, and he’d look after the girls while his mom was at work. They’d watch films on the couch, later than he was supposed to let the girls stay up, and when it was time for bed, Daisy and Phoebe would both give him that same look, their heads lolling towards him, arms held out, slack-limbed and heavy-eyed and needy in the gentle way that only toddlers can be.

Daisy looks at him like that now. It’s a slow, simple thing when she slides off the bonnet and straight into his arms like a ragdoll, face tucked against his neck, arms loose around his shoulders. Louis holds her up tight, cradles her head and her back, her legs, presses soft kisses in to the curlings wisps of hair around her ears. It’s completely silent, just the gentle pitter-patter of the first heavy drops on the truck, and between them he feels a calm, an apology from both of them without the need for words. 

“You feeling better, little love?” Louis whispers. He kisses her again and again, rubs her shaking back.

“Better,” Daisy mumbles, drowsy and still half asleep. 

“That’s my girl,” Louis says. “Tough cookie, aren’t you?” 

“Toughest,” Daisy says, lips in a gentle smile against Louis’ skin. He smiles, too, lets out a thankful sigh, a huge gust of relief that shakes his chest, closing his eyes and rocking them both gently, rain getting caught in his lashes, dripping along his back. 

The way Harry wakes is a slow, painful thing. He comes to with a terrible groan, face contorted into a wince as he lifts his neck slowly, a hand coming up to rub there, at his shoulder as he sits up. His hair is stuck along his temples, curled into tight ringlets by his ears from a combination of both rain and humidity, and there’s a sticky pale clinging to his under eyes, turning the fade of his sunburn into an off, sickly pink. The moment their gazes catch, a guilty flush catches on the edges of Harry’s cheeks, and he blinks at Louis slowly.

Louis will grill him later about falling asleep on watch. For now, he just mouths _thank you_ with as much gratitude as he can manage and presses another kiss to Daisy’s head. Harry nods and slides off the bonnet, stretching his arms above his head, then lifting the bottom of his shirt to wipe at his face and the wet ends of his hair. Louis looks away.

“Huh,” Harry huffs, a short laugh of a thing, looking up. “Rain. How weird.” 

“We better unroll the tarp before it gets bad,” Louis says, nodding his head out to the distance, where the light grey that hangs above them now twists into something dark. “That looks nasty.”

“Good idea,” Harry says. 

It’s strange to see things this way after the long stretch of dryness that’s proceeded the huddle of clouds. Louis can’t remember if it ever actually rained while they were in California, though he’s not sure if that’s a stereotype his fatigued brain has tricked him into thinking true, or if it really just didn’t rain. He can barely remember anything concrete about the smaller things like that. What had yesterday been warm and gold and dead is now grey and black and dead in a different way, the loss of colour exposing the true grit and paleness of everything around them. 

Louis sets Daisy down gently, and she teeters into Harry’s side instantly, leaning her face against his ribs. Harry places a tentative palm over her shoulder, smiling at Louis softly, almost an _is this okay?_ Louis just smiles stiffly and looks away, already moving back to the truck bed to untuck the tarp from beneath everything. They’ll stretch it from the top of the truck and down to the other side of the bed. It’s a tight fit, and there’s a hole in the middle from the time Niall accidentally poked a stick through it, but they have it at least, and it’ll do. 

It’s as he’s wrangling with the tarp, the edges caught up in jagged rope, that a fog of dust catches his eyes far in the distance, from the shadow of the town they’ve stopped outside of. On a sunny day, it’d just be a haze. But right now, amongst the grey and the wet, the dirt slowly becoming waterlogged and not lifting naturally with the breeze, the dust rising and swirling the way it is doesn’t look right. It doesn’t look like a gust of wind. It looks like–

“Fuck,” Louis whispers, dropping the tarp. “Fuck, _fuck._ Harry!”

He rips the door of the truck open, shaking Leigh-Anne and Niall awake frantically, trying to climb in the driver side and shove Niall out of the way, turning the key. The truck sputters, and it’s a gurgle of wet noise, mixing with the rain and Leigh-Anne’s swearing and Harry’s thick questioning. Louis tries the key again but Niall doesn’t have his his fucking foot down and Louis is panicking, he’s fucking panicking because– 

“We’ve gotta go,” he hisses, frantic. “Niall, they’re coming. They’re gonna take Dais, they’re gonna take her.” 

“Lou,” he hears her whisper, and she’s gone watery eyed at the commotion, clinging to Harry’s fingers and watching the dust cloud get closer, the rumble of engines audible now. Harry has gone white as a sheet, completely frozen. 

“It’s too late,” Leigh-Anne says, swallowing, training her eyes out the back of the truck. “It’s too fucking late.”

“It’s not.” Louis’ chest is heaving.

“Christ,” Niall says. “Fucking Christ.”

There’s nothing they can do, and Louis scoops Daisy up again, holding her tight, fingers shaking, rain coming down harder now. Harry still hasn’t moved, but when Daisy starts to cry, a hushed thing, the boxy 4WD’s coming closer, all dark greens and browns and dirty streaks, he steps in front of her and Louis both, a hand pushing them backwards. 

Louis glances up at him, at the sharp, steady line of his jaw and the steeliness that’s coated over his eyes, suddenly back in the dark of that little house, a barrel at his head.

The trucks slow to a stop, doors opening, thick boots landing with a wet sound on the ground. Daisy tucks her face into Louis’ neck to hide. His vision is half obscured by Harry’s shoulder, but he doesn’t miss the slick grins on the faces of the approaching men, doesn’t miss the snarl that’s starting to curl around Niall’s mouth, that he’s struggling to keep down, doesn’t miss the way Leigh-Anne reaches steady and sure for her gun, staring the men down.

“Mornin’,” one of them says, still smiling. There’s a tiny _beep_ , the little screen in his hands lighting up. “Who’s first, then?” 

Nobody moves.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh how i've missed writing cliffhangers
> 
> thanks for reading my dears!! as per usual your comments and feedback are greatly appreciated, don't be afraid to come say hi on tumblr too!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _That was the thing Louis always remembers most about California, how hot and humid and otherworldly things seemed, but how desolate and dead and cold they were under the surface. Mostly, he remembers because Zayn always seemed to conform to neither ends of that disorientating spectrum._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiiiiya everyone, hope ur having a nice week! i decided to upload a little early again bc i finished another chapter off soooo here's this!! after this chapter the story really starts to pick up so i'm super excited for the next few weeks :')
> 
> hope u like it!! ♡

The first time Louis saw a person shot, he and Daisy were among a group of thirty, bloodied and aching, their car recently hijacked, hungry and frightened and alone. 

His shirt was still torn and sticking to his back, caked in dry, flaking blood, and Daisy had gaping grazes on her knees, on her elbows, pale and shaky and lazy-eyed because they hadn’t had water in days, had only managed to guilt scraps from strangers. Louis had given all of his to Daisy, and when the sun had risen on that balmy day, sunshot rays bursting through clouds of dust and lighting the entire room, all the mounds of dirty blankets and heaving, dying bodies, he was sure he was hallucinating when he’d looked out the window, looked out into the yellow-spun earth and seen the trucks approaching, hazy dust billowing lucid and dream-like upwards. 

 _Help,_ his mind had murmured, fingers ghosting along the window. _Rescue._

He can still feel the flurry of movement in that room, the whirlwind of dust and cautious eyes and tight fingers, all of them spilling out into a deathly summer, shoving and pushing and banging shoulders to stand in front, meeting the trucks halfway, all camo and sleek and solid, a promise of safety. Daisy was in his arms, clung to his neck with wide, frightened eyes at the commotion, the two of them lost in a clamour of dirt and desperation. The trucks stopped and a small unit of men spilt leisurely from the doors, walked towards them with casual gaits and pulled tiny devices from their belts. The group was frozen, buzzing with the anticipation of it, and Louis had prayed then, for one of the first and last times, clinging to Daisy so tightly, wishing for anything, for any type of miracle.

They were ordered to line up, and one by one the officers went along the line, held up the little device to misty eyes, and waited for a singular, short, _beep_. That sound filled the chasmed silence of the morning, a forefront to the echo of smashing glass and the distant spiral of a world on it’s head. _Whir, beep, move along. Whir, beep, move along. Whir, beep, move along._ Each time, the little light turned from blue to green. 

The men stopped in front of them, scanned a crying Daisy, the machine spurting a dull _beep_. They moved along to Louis, blue light flashing bright and hot against his eyes. _Beep_. 

They remained still, breaths held in anticipation now, almost in fear. A slow realisation that this wasn’t a rescue had begun to dawn on them all. The officers went down the line, every _beep_ of those machines rattling Louis’ teeth despite the quiet of it, making his jaw twitch and his pulse jump, panic lodging itself against his chest. Sweating, body sagging and aching under the weight of holding Daisy so long, Louis forced himself not to crumble, watching the officers address the last few of the group. 

_Beep-beep-beep._

It seemed, within that moment, that all the air around them become frozen, dust so cloying and thick that it clogged their mouths and their noses and their eyes, everything gone underwater but still so dry and grating. The officers were paused in front of a young man, all thin, spindly bones and pale skin, taut from hunger, sweat pooled in every dip of his skin, a sticky purple cast under his wide, terrified eyes when the light turned from blue to red. Once more, the officer lifted the tiny device. 

_Beep-beep-beep._

The man began to shake, something unsettling and palpable gripping the air around them. After a few seconds of eerie silence, the offices glanced towards each other, and after a resounding nod from the group, guns were raised. Louis can still recall the scatter of it, the screams, people running and shoving and fleeing like spooked animals, sprinting for shelter. It was only a split second, a blink, and by the time Louis had begun to turn around, Daisy clinging so tightly to him he was almost choking, the first shot that rang out seemed to echo onward forever. 

He can still remember how loud it was, how close. He can still see the stagger of the man’s body, the bloody flecks in the dirt. Things get hazy after that. It was loud, he knows that much, gunfire ringing out, screaming as those remaining in the line were chased, weeping as those who were safe – a loosely used term – mourned something they couldn’t even begin to yet understand. 

Daisy had thrown up the second he’d set her down, shaking so violently, breathing gone so wheezy and short that Louis feared she was about to stop all together. 

Huddled together in a dirty, abandoned room, sunlight igniting dust, the entire sky open and endless, it had dawned on him then, that help wasn’t coming. Nobody was coming for them. Nobody except the planes and the bombs and the quarantine tape, the scald of fire and bullets. Extermination. Cleansing. Stripping the world bare of the dirt and decay that’d dug underneath folds of its skin. 

Their only option was to survive. To wait, and to pray that somehow, by some miracle, they’d make it out on the other side when this was all over. That it would be over soon.

-

Thunder shudders overhead. 

The misty rain is gone, fat droplets slapping heavy and wet on their skin. Shadows crawl closer along the ground as the dark clouds start to hover near, the grit of the storm edging past the lip of the horizon and hanging low. They’re soaked but it feels almost like sweat, air still startlingly warm. 

“We ain’t got all day,” the officer says, with less leisure this time, staring them down forcefully. “Get in line.” 

Again, the stillness of the world around them extends to themselves, and Louis holds his breath in his chest, clutching Daisy tighter. 

The officer shakes his head and laughs, then, with a sudden jerk, he pulls his gun. “I said, get the _fuck_ in line!” 

Their bodies shudder, slowly clumping together wonkily. Louis’ muscles have gone taut. Beside him, Harry is frozen still, breathing shallow, water dripping from his nose and chin. The first officer approaches, guns still raised, while the second officer inspects their truck, digging through their things carelessly. 

“Alright,” the officer drawls, smirking as he pulls Leigh-Anne’s gun from her grip forcefully, raising his scanner. “Pretty eyes up here, darlin’.” 

She spits at his feet, and even in the terrifying intensity of this moment, Louis has to fight the smile that’s threatening on his lips at the defiant way she stares the man down. The officer’s mouth curls into a snarl.

“I’m not your _darlin’_ ,” Leigh-Anne hisses. 

The officer says nothing, just forces her chin up with his fingers and scans. _Beep_. “Where’s the last place y’all visited?”

“Oregon,” Leigh-Anne says.

The officer moves on to Niall, stony eyes meeting. _Beep_. “New Mexico.”

Daisy lifts her head and stares the man down, a defiant, shaky pout. When he smiles at her, Louis crowds her closer to his chest, glaring. The man scans her, and she flinches at the _beep_. “What about you, little lady? You gonna give me a different answer, too?”

“Leave her alone,” Louis says quietly. Daisy is digging half moons into his skin, breathing shaky, and he knows how scared she is of being taken, can see the memories of watching other kids being torn from their groups flickering through her tear-clumped lashes. 

The second officer is rummaging through their things still, clattering and making a mess of the truck bed, and Louis grits his teeth against the noise, fights the urge to do something incredibly stupid when the man disregards Harry’s paperbacks onto the ground, pages sinking into the wet mud that’s forming. The scanner is shoved into Louis’ face.

_Beep._

“Colorado,” he says evenly, the lie rolling easily off his tongue. He’s done it enough now, learnt plenty since the first time he’d said _Indiana_ and had been immediately tugged into the back of a truck, blood drawn from his arms because they didn’t trust the scanners, afraid that he was truly about to die and leave Daisy behind.

“Right,” the man laughs under his breath. 

Lighting cracks the sky in two, a sudden flurry of electric lavender, turning the clouds into purpling bruises. Things are dark now, so much so that the tail-end of dawn has morphed into a facade of dusk. The officer steps in front of Harry, and something unsettling curls in the pit of Louis’ stomach. Harry’s face is steely, jaw clenched when he man holds the scanner to his face.

“Michigan,” Harry says, and Louis whips his head around to look at him, startled. That _couldn’t_ be the truth– 

_Beep-beep-beep._

Everything around them freezes, becomes suspended. The rain stops falling, all the air gone, and all that’s left is the tiny glow of that red light. Harry hasn’t moved, doesn’t flinch under the sudden onslaught of heads turned towards him, but his shoulders are shaking with the short breaths he’s taking in.

“Scan him again,” the second officer says, looking back over his shoulder from the truck bed, eyes narrowed.

“Harry?” Daisy whispers.

Harry’s gaze doesn’t waver as the scanner whirs again, bathed in blue and steel. 

_Beep-beep-beep._

The officers spring into action, and Harry does move now, backing away rapidly, feet fumbling on the slippery dirt. Louis watches with his mouth parted, watches the officers grab Harry’s arms forcefully, trying to tug him forwards, dragging him as he thrashes against their grip. His eyes have lost their steely resolve. He looks panicked, frightened. Caught out, when he meets Louis’ gaze. 

“Harry!” Daisy is squirming in Louis’ arms, crying now. Louis holds her tighter.

A part of him refuses to believe that Harry could be infected, that he couldn’t possibly be. But then how could he know? How does he know that Harry got to the first vaccine in time, that he hasn’t been turning slowly. Louis thinks of the house in the middle of nowhere, of the bullet holes and the glass smashed in from the outside, of Harry waiting for them in the dark, _watching_ them, ready to shoot the moment they’d swung the door open. Harry, alone and hoarding food and fuel, holed up in the middle of Arizona. 

“ _Please_ ,” Harry lashes out, kicks his legs and tries to pull back against the officers. His voice is thin and strained, ripped from his throat. “I’m not infected, I _swear_. I’m _not,_ I swear I’m not!” 

When he looks back, his eyes are moony and wet and wide, shiny storm light glazing the wobbly tears there. He looks like a frightened animal, something feral and instinctive about the way he’s trying to turn himself out of the officer’s arms, feet flicking up dirt and mud, chest shuddering. Daisy is crying into Louis’ neck. 

“ _I’m not infected_ ,” Harry pleads, a singular, raw sob crawling from his throat. “ _Please–please–_ ”

Louis lurches forward before he can stop himself.

Niall, the smarter of the both of them, pulls him back so sharply he almost topples over, eyes fire-wild. Leigh-Anne looks ashen, a hand over her mouth as Harry is pulled away, becoming a blur as they shove him into the truck side, the first officer holding him there with an arm to his throat. It feels so incredibly _wrong_ , so disturbing, and Louis doesn’t know how they’re ever supposed to get over this, how they’re ever supposed to be okay when the one thing that’s supposed to protect them is picking them off one by one. 

The officers draw Harry’s blood, and they hold him down like he’s about to turn on them that very second, like within a split moment he could snarl and snap his teeth and turn dead-skinned and rotting. The very image of it has Louis’ stomach flipping, has the inky, golden fuzz of a memory he’s tried so hard to repress swelling like a tinnitus buzz in his ears, a ringing of _lou please don’t please help me help me help me_ that has him dropping Daisy slowly, eyes going hot.

He shouldn’t care this much, he fucking _shouldn’t_ , but the problem is he does. No matter how much he tries to pretend he’s been hardened by all the god awful things that they’ve been through, that he’s stoic and steely and unphased by the horror they have to go through every single day, he knows that isn’t true. He’s become softer in some aspects, more terrifyingly vulnerable, and this is one of the things that he can’t stop himself from doing; from caring, from becoming attached too quickly, from looking at the way Daisy is shaking and needing everything to be alright for her, to try and stop the people in her life that she’s come to love disappearing faster than she can blink. 

The worst of the storm has finished it’s cascade, and they reside now in the foggy aftermath of its grey, a light mist slanting down. Black clouds drift in chase of a new place for downpour, and the ring of dead yellow sunlight is becoming visible, tinging cotton. Louis blinks against the wetness and watches Harry lumber back towards them, arms looped feebly around his stomach as the officers trail behind him, lips pulled into thin lines. 

Daisy bursts from Louis grip and runs towards Harry’s figure, burrowing into his waist so thoroughly that he almost falls, and Louis lets her, restrains the urge to yank her back, closer, the shrill, tinny echo of _beep-beep-beep_ still buzzing. When Harry finally reaches them again, Louis pulls him gently behind his body with a tentative hand, tucking him away.

“Where are y’all heading?” the first officer says. 

“D.C,” Louis says.

The man just laughs and shakes his head, backing away. “Good luck with that. They’ve been herding the fuckers like cattle.”

It’s not until the unnatural cloud of dust clears and the rain finally thins to a spit that any of them remember how to breathe. They’re absolutely drenched. In a sad puddle, the tarp lies tangled, dirty water pooled in bunches of fabric, and their things are hanging and splayed all throughout the truck bed, clothes flung into the dirt, dry sheets clogged with rainwater. The doors are still open, the seats inside gone damp and dark, and the dirt and rust that had been framing the windscreen has gathered in a putrid slither along the insides of the door, dripping down thickly. 

When Louis turns slowly, Harry has dropped into a crouch. His head is in his hands, shoulders trembling gently. On his right arm, a watery, pale trickle of blood sluices from the inside of his elbow and drips, the clumsy place where they put the needle blooming bright. Daisy crouches beside him gingerly, blonde hair gone brown and clinging to her thin face, bony wrist shaking when she lays a gentle arm over Harry’s back.

“I’m sorry, Harry,” she whispers, leans her temple against his shoulder. Louis’ eyes burn.

Harry says nothing to indulge her. His back rises with a huge, stilted breath, a giant balloon of air, and when he lets it go, it’s with a breathy sob, a broken, choppy sound. Louis rolls his eyes to the dark sky when Niall’s fingers brush his back, when Leigh-Anne leans her hands on Niall’s shoulder, rests her cheek there. It’s so painfully quiet around them, dead Texas opening the husk of her heart, uncurling her hollow ribs and showing them how far the emptiness stretches. 

Louis feels too intrusive standing over Harry like this now, what little shadow their figures have casting a dark smudge over his crouched body. Slowly, he backs away, turns to the truck and starts to mechanically pick up their things. One of Daisy’s jumpers, the last one they’d taken from Indiana, is caked in mud, the pink gone dull and frayed. He curls the worn fabric in his fingers for a moment, closes his eyes, breathes through the pressure on his chest. 

When he picks up the paperback at his feet and turns it over, a sweep of melancholy pulses too sweet, fuzzes his teeth, makes his heart go heavy. Blinking rapidly to scatter the threat of tears, he wipes the mud from the cover. Alice’s disfigured face smiles up at him.

-

Everything around them smells damp, even when the sun finally breaks through the clouds and shines down. Dust clings to everything, the truck streaked with it, their clothes clogged with it, and in the truck bed Louis, Leigh-Anne and Daisy all sit on the edge of a sheet, letting the rest of it billow upward and flap in the wind in an attempt to dry it. Niall is setting a growling pace, the truck gurgling and rumbling, dust flying behind them as they pass into Oklahoma. 

Harry is in the front with him, leant against the window. He’s not asleep, arms looped over his stomach, making, short, quiet conversation with Niall every now and again. He’d been so pale when he’d climbed into the passenger side earlier, Louis’ hands guiding him gently while Leigh-Anne lifted a disgruntled Daisy into the back.

“Can I go sit with Harry now?” she pokes Louis’ side, blinking up at him all innocent. Her hair has gone absolutely wild, Harry’s braids proving no match for the wind, and it’s curling and crimping oddly from the rain, framing her pink cheeks. 

“I’m not that boring, am I?” Louis teases lightly, and she rolls her eyes and huffs, shoving him.

“You _know_ I don’t mean it like that,” Daisy sighs. She peers through the glass into the truck, nosed pressed against it. “I just want to know if he’s alright.” 

“Give him some space to breath, hon,” Leigh-Anne says, curling a palm around the back of Daisy’s head. She falls into it, going willingly into Leigh-Anne’s side, tucking her face into her stomach. “I’m sure he’ll be just fine.”

Daisy huffs again and cuddles closer, closing her eyes. 

When Leigh-Anne meets Louis’ eye, she winks and settles her hands into Daisy’s hair, stroking softly, until her breath evens out and her lashes start to flutter with dreams.

“Are we going to talk about it?” Leigh-Anne says quietly, lost under the wind.

Louis picks at a scab on his knee. “I don’t know. I don’t think I want to.”

“Do you think he’s infected?”

He pauses before he answers, rolls his head onto his shoulder to meet her eye. “They let him go, didn’t they?”

“I’m asking you,” Leigh-Anne says, raising an eyebrow. 

She’s always had this way of making him tell whole truths, ever since they met, always been the one to push them through the bullshit that he could never overcome. Louis still remembers the first time they’d properly met, deployed off the plane into a random park in California, only to be herded onto a cramped, rattling bus and shuttled down to the coast. The undead were still everywhere, then, and they’d spent the night holding their breaths when the bus would _thud_ with the impact of a rotting body, when the headlights would brush past wild, unfocused eyes, chasing them through the dust. 

It had been Leigh-Anne who’d given up her seat so Daisy could sleep through the night. It had been Leigh-Anne who had fought tooth and nail to get food to her, pushing her way through greedy hands, helpless hands, so that she could eat because Louis was still too dazed, too weak to even try and push through the hoards. When they’d finally made it to the water, stepping out onto the dirty, dead streets, Leigh-Anne had Daisy cradled on her hip and a hand on Louis’ shoulder, guiding them gently into line with everyone else waiting for housing, for somewhere to go and rest, to hide. 

For Daisy not to be clawing her way out of Leigh-Anne’s grip and into Louis’ was the first sign. She was always attached to his hip before they’d met Leigh-Anne, cowered away from others, constantly afraid of strangers brushing past her, and the constant panic in her eyes made Louis just feel empty. But then Leigh-Anne had brushed her ratty hair back from her cheeks, had said _look at this gorgeous face, just like rapunzel, you are,_ and Daisy had flushed and tucked her head under Leigh-Anne’s neck while the knots of her hair were slowly untangled. 

“Louis,” Leigh-Anne nudges his leg with her foot gently, and he pulls himself out of the hazy memory, out of the blue weight that’s starting to pull at his chest, because he doesn’t like to think about what happened after that, what waited for him up those stairs, behind that chipped door, warm eyes and Daisy’s fear morphing into trust and love and something bright again, something that he almost felt, too.

“Daisy trusts him,” Louis says. “So I’m going to trust him. For now.” 

“For now,” Leigh-Anne agrees. She locks their pinkies together.

-

The housing units in California were dirty and dark and cramped, and despite the bright, blinding light that constantly shone down outside, the hallways were drab and filtered only with frosted dust, rugs mud and dirt stained. Louis can still remember the way sweat was sliding down his neck but walking down that hallway felt cold and void, like all the life had been sucked away, doors locked twice, weighty silence the only sound. 

That was the thing Louis always remembers most about California, how hot and humid and otherworldly things seemed, but how desolate and dead and cold they were under the surface. Mostly, he remembers because Zayn always seemed to conform to neither ends of that disorientating spectrum. 

Their room was the last in the hall, the only one that still had enough empty beds to fit the three of them in, the green, mossy paint on the door peeling away, wood-chipped, handle rusted. Leigh-Anne had knocked because Daisy had a death grip around Louis’ waist again, chewing anxiously at the side of her thumb, toes scraping her too-small shoes. 

The door cracked open a slither, tired hazel, honey eyes peering out at them, a flickering, assessing gaze before the gap widened. Daisy cowered against Louis’ side, forehead against his hip, and the man behind the door had stared down at her for a moment, then to Louis, and back down to Daisy.

“Cool shirt.” That was the first thing Zayn said to them, almost with an air of nonchalance. When Daisy slowly lifted her head, he smiled warmly at her and flashed his brows. She was wearing one of Louis’ old ones, one of the only shirts he’d managed to pack when heaven let it’s fire rain down on their home, a faded, crinkled Batman shirt that he’d picked up at a thrift store years ago, the yellow of the logo cracked and worn down, and even now Louis thinks about that moment too much, the glow of Zayn’s cheeks, the scar along the side of his neck, the sharpie tucked behind his ear, the gentleness of his features beneath the rough stubble and the tattoos and the early morning shadows the room painted him in. 

Daisy didn’t reply, just went bright pink and smudged her cheek into Louis’ ribs to hide. Zayn had smiled at Louis, then, reserved and quiet as he opened the door up for them properly, stepping away to let them in. He was a stooped waif, thin, but all sinewy gold and defined knuckles scraped with scars and small scabs, hollows of his cheeks like a skeleton, so sharp that Louis used to imagine he could see Zayn’s teeth in the dark, see the outline of them when he’d suck a cigarette by the window at night. 

“Do you like Batman?” he asked, still talking to Daisy even though she looked slightly terrified. She shrugged and rubbed her toes together, and Zayn nodded. “C’mere, you can have a look at my comics, if you want.”

It was another moment, almost the same he’d had with Leigh-Anne, because Daisy inched hesitantly away from Louis’ side and towards Zayn’s once the colourful, fuzzy pages were waved her way. She’d been nervous and hunched in and hadn’t said a word, but she let Zayn touch her wrists and guide her fingers, let him point out his favourite parts and make little quips until she’d been pink-cheeked and leaning against his side without realizing she’d done it.

Louis remembers taking that moment to breathe, to drop their bags onto one of the unoccupied single beds and cross to the window, shoving it open with an obnoxious creak. The beach was visible from the room, the coast stretching out like a golden road, and he could smell it, the salt and the sand that almost masked the crippling odor of the undead that hung like a shadow closeby, not visible but always omnipresent. 

He watched the water curl, morning breaking like the waves delicately, and for one naive beat he imaged they were back in Florida, summer just beginning, the cloying smell of sunscreen and sugar clogging his senses instead of the stale leftovers of the beach and the room and everything around them. Then, he blinked himself out of that dangerous place in his mind and clambered back through the window, listening to Daisy’s shy, soft laughter, Leigh-Anne standing behind her with a fond smile on her face, a gentle hand against Daisy’s neck. 

Zayn was crouched in front of her, knobby knees and elbows, tank billowed and too big around his waist and his chest, and Louis can still see him glowing there, the muted shine on his shoulders and the tip of his nose, all wide, calm eyes, always so calm, spindly lashes flashing when he blinked up at Daisy with something so gentle that Louis’ breath left his chest, because nobody ever looked at her like that anymore, nobody except Louis. 

Daisy had been giggling, hidden behind her thin fingers when Zayn gave silly commentary, juvenile, playful things like _in this part, batman is kicking some bad guy’s butt_ , and the goofiness of it had Daisy in shy stitches, clinging to Louis’ fingers while she swung her body into the side of the bed and back to Louis’ hip. Zayn had blinked up at him when Louis joined their side, hair swept back off his cheeks as he did. Their eyes flickered for a moment.

“What’s your name?” Zayn had asked Daisy, touching her stomach lightly with his comic. “Is it Batman?”

“ _No_ ,” Daisy had been incredulous, shy. “It’s Daisy.”

“Like the flower,” Zayn said brightly. He uncapped the sharpie behind his ear, and on the inside of her wrist he drew a tiny, beaming daisy, cartoon sunray’s dancing around it, these little flicks of navy ink on her delicate skin. Daisy had blushed, properly blushed and hidden her red face against Louis’ ribs, but Zayn hadn’t take any offence to it, had done nothing but smile and stretch slowly to his feet. For that one moment, they’d swayed so close that their noses had almost brushed when Zayn glanced up from Daisy, and they’d drifted apart naturally.

“Zayn,” he said, held out his hand to shake, and Louis had taken it carefully, so unprepared for the heat of his neck and the electric pulse that went between their fingers, the lingering brush of them when they finally parted. 

“Louis.” Their hands were still touching, and Zayn had blinked his gaze away after a moment, clearing his throat.

“This is it, I guess,” he gestured to the room weakly, a little smirk curling his lips, something sardonic, a word he’d come to know Zayn by like the back of his hand. 

There was a double and two singles, a couch shoved in the corner, the double’s sheets ruffled and scrunched from a night of restless sleep. Louis took the couch despite Zayn’s protest that he and Daisy share the bed. It felt too much like an intrusion on top of what was already a cluster of anonymity. Leigh-Anne and Daisy took the singles, Zayn the double, and Louis curled up on the couch and pressed his face into the stale-smelling cushions, praying for sleep. 

It took him only a night to become too curious, because as he found out, Zayn rarely slept on those California nights, and subsequently, neither did Louis. Zayn would turn back and forth repeatedly, vault out the window and have a cigarette, then come back to bed and be just as restless until he got up for another, always emptying out his pack and counting the buds in his palm before he did so. In the mornings he’d be rumpled, raven hair mussed and soft and tangled from his tossing, sheets drawn up around his bare chest, dark, warm skin lit up from the sun slanting through the window, and all Louis could do was watch, then, watch him rise and scratch at his naked, tattooed hips, open the window and let the sea air in. 

Those mornings always felt like both a release and a holding of breath. Zayn would open the window, and all that fresh-rot air would seep into the staleness of the room, and Louis would blink awake like some kind of routine with the knowledge that this was their life now. Waiting for resolution, stuck in this sweaty, overcrowded city waiting for some form of deliverance. Watching the hustle of bodies out the window, the translucently thin curtains brushing their cheeks, Daisy wide eyed for the first few weeks at the bustle of it, the almost normality that could have been. 

He still recalls waking that first morning with Daisy plastered to his back, drawing a thin, cold fingers down the scars there over his t-shirt, spindly hair tickling the back of his neck. He remembers rolling over and seeing Zayn open the window that first time, remembers him untucking the sharpie from behind his ear, sliding open the matchbox in his hands and striking the tiny line into the cardboard. 

“What’s that,” Louis murmured, still hazed with sleep and muffled by Daisy’s hair, muffled by the weak, bleeding sunlight that blurred Zayn from behind. 

Zayn had given him a little grin, that dark, sticky thing he always did, like he was in on a joke nobody else knew about, pushed the carton out and rattled the singular cigarette inside, revealed all the tiny, coloured lines.

“I’m counting down to V-day,” he said, full of mirth but all soft edges. He slid it closed, looked to Daisy. “Want to go for a walk?” 

Daisy looked terrified by the very notion of going outside, and Louis felt it but tried not to let it show. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d voluntarily gone outside, the last time they’d dared to step a foot out into an open place, afraid of what might happen. But, eventually, they’d risen, and the nervous shake to Daisy’s shoulders didn’t dissipate until Zayn had knocked her gently with his hip. 

“You look fresh as a _daisy_ ,” he said, so sweet on her, always so fucking sweet on her, eyes a crinkled honey, tongue poking from behind his teeth when Daisy had giggled, that shy flush streaking her cheeks again, and she’d reached for Zayn’s hand gingerly, looking to Louis for reassurance. He’d given it to her in spades.

Leigh-Anne had waved them off and tucked herself back under the covers, and then they’d walked outside, left the cold, dull hallway and out into the cracked sunlight of morning, walked among other people without the instinctive threat of _run-protect-run-hide,_ bodies moulding and shifting as they broke through the line of buildings and onto an old, splintered boardwalk, the beach suddenly spread before them endlessly, the ocean seeming infinite and blue and larger than life. 

There was a total moment of pause when their feet touched the sand, and Louis can picture it so clearly now, the wonder in Daisy’s eyes when she’d dug in her toes into the grains, the elation of its simplicity. Louis watched the sweat form on Zayn’s top lip, watched the fond smile he aimed at Daisy, the quiet amusement over her barely hidden excitement, rushing forward and showing through the cracks of her quakes and her fears and the ingrained quiet that had become a part of her, a part that was never there before, a part that Zayn helped her break away from every day. 

“Go on, then,” he’d said, nodded his head towards the water, and Daisy had been stunned, had looked at Louis with wet eyes and Louis had nodded, too, smiled genuinely for the first time in months. Daisy took off in a flurry of sand and piercing laughter, barrelling fully clothed into the cold water, ducking beneath the smooth curve of a tiny wave and bursting back up in a flurry of gold-shimmery foam, eyes so bright, calling for Louis to join her. 

Zayn nudged his shoulder gently, and when Louis turned to look at him, heart caught in his chest already, just from that, just from being close, he’d felt something so solid settle in the pit of his stomach. Nothing felt real. 

“You, too,” Zayn said, and it had taken Louis a moment to break away, to feel that pulse of adrenaline, but then he was flying, running full speed until he hit the water and when he went under the end of the world felt forever away. Daisy jumped onto his back, splashed him with that sparkly foam, bright blue surrounding them on all sides while Zayn watched from shoreline, feet kicking through the half-formed barrels there. They were untouchable. Nothing could hurt them in the safety of those waves.

-

When they come to a stop, dusk is cascading and rippling shadows over the mesas in the distance, turning the red dirt behind them into a hazy fuzz, the horizon glowing warm. They’ve managed to find a small cluster of trees for cover, shaded by the slant of the hill towering beside it, rocky and weaved with dark shrubs, and they hang their wet clothes and sheets from spindly branches, spread the tarp out and attempt to brush the worst of the dirt and water off with their hands. 

Louis slings his shotgun over his shoulder, and he and Niall go walking together around the area, kicking a rock between them. They’ve been passing tiny towns all day, husks of homes that have been completely deserted, similar to the place they’d stopped in New Mexico. It’s for that reason that they’d kept the car going, Niall staring determinedly at the road for the entire day. 

“We’re not going to make it,” Niall says, tilting his head up to the last of the sunlight when they step out from the shadow of the hills. Everything turns crisp orange, burnt amber. 

“How much further do we have?” Louis says. He’s known this has been coming for a while now, has been trying to ignore the thought since they ditched the first jerry can. They’d only had forty litres to begin with, twenty in the truck, twenty stored. Sighing quietly to himself, he slides the matchbox and his stanley knife from his pockets, digs in his line carefully, puts them both away. He’s running out of space.

“Maybe to Arkansas, Tennessee if we’re lucky,” Niall says slowly, calculating. “Depends how far we can stretch it.” 

“We’ll have to loot, then,” Louis scratches at his arm. “Dig through the next few places we go.”

Niall just hums, and they settle into a knowing silence as they turn back towards the truck, a rusty, clay-blue speck in the distance, hidden half amongst the trees. As they draw nearer, Louis can hear Daisy’s giggled laughter, soft and bubbly and shy. There’s humming, too, her high, twinkly voiced mixed with something deeper. When they round the truck, Louis blinks down at the sight.

Leigh-Anne has her hands in Harry’s hair, cutting the uneven, wonky curls away. Harry sits cross-legged in front of her, chin up, posture straight, and Daisy mirrors him. With both their left hands raised, Harry smiles down at her gently. 

“That was good,” he says. “Now let’s try with the hand signs, yeah?”

Daisy’s hair is freshly braided, knotted tight against her scalp and falling down her back, neat and shiny, the ends trimmed off. The rusted scissors in Leigh-Anne’s hand squeak as she trims the hair around Harry’s neck, cropped short. Louis stands frozen, watching in bewilderment.

“Give me a lovely _do_.” Harry sings the last word with flourish, long and drawn out, making a loose fist with his hand. Daisy copies him, her own _do_ softer, higher. “Gorgeous. You’re a natural.”

They continue like that, Harry changing his hand sign as he works through a slow progression of _do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do_ , Daisy copying him until they do it all in one pass. Harry’s voice is a deep rumble, honey smooth, and Daisy has a brightness in her eyes that Louis hasn’t seen in so long, since those whispered lullabies on the beach.

“ _What_ did we miss?” Niall laughs, sitting down and knocking shoulders with Daisy.

“Harry is teaching me _solfa_ ,” she says matter-of-factly. Louis leans up against the truck and crosses his arms loosely over his chest, watching with amusement. Things seem to be a little lighter around them now, the settled quiet not so tense, not laced with this morning’s memory. 

“And I couldn’t stand looking at Harry’s hair any longer,” Leigh-Anne chips in, to which Harry pouts and drawls an affronted _hey_. “I’m sorry. It was ridiculous.”

“Well,” Harry huffs, brushing the little strands of hair from his shoulders. “The last time I did it I couldn’t exactly see what I was cutting.”

“Can we do the song again?” Daisy says, humming to herself. 

“Only if everyone else joins in, too,” Harry says, and he smiles at Niall softly, then points an arm vaguely in Louis’ direction, not wanting to shift under Leigh-Anne’s hands. “You too, Louis.”

“What am I getting myself into, exactly?” Louis sighs begrudgingly, sitting down on Daisy’s opposite side. 

Leigh-Anne is a smudge of a silhouette, sun brushing against her from behind and casting an orange, white-hot glow around her, an aura, and the same light shines around Harry’s frame, forehead soft and visible now without his hair hanging down, his face more open. Louis tries not to stare at him, the pale moss colour his eyes have turned in this light. Frustratingly, it proves near impossible.

“Just a little canon,” Harry says, drumming his fingers on his knees. “No fancy hand signs required.” 

“Right,” Louis says slowly. 

“Do you want to start, Dais?” Harry says. 

“You can,” she says shyly. “I can’t remember the start.”

“That’s alright, you just listen and when you need to come in, go for it,” Harry encourages, then he nods at Louis and Niall, smiles kindly. “Same for you both.”

The melody Harry sings is dreamy and dark, lilting, his voice swinging with it as he moves up and down the scale, and it’s rough and golden, soft, the words coming easy as anything. 

_Sunlight is fading, night is awake. Rest in my arms, and rest until day._

It’s as the phrase repeats itself for a second time that Daisy joins in after the first line. Creating a soft mantra of _sunlight is fading,_ Leigh-Anne joins in too, following after Daisy. Niall goes next, and Louis fumbles to follow, all their voices weaving and interlacing and ebbing in and out of harmony. Louis loses the tune by the first round, as does Niall, but Daisy and Leigh-Anne keep going, and their voices compliment the octave above Harry’s tone, the canon circulating in a hazy, haunting melody, something that makes Louis want to drift. The words swell and hush, a rhythmic wave, and if he closes his eyes he can almost feel sand beneath his fingers, see the blue beach spread out in front of them.

The canon ends when Harry holds out both palms, he, Daisy and Leigh-Anne holding their notes until he cuts them off. There’s a soft smile on his face, almost fond, and Daisy mirrors it.

“Beautiful,” he says. “Well done, Dais. You really carried that.”

She flushes and shrugs, shoulders curling in as she beams down at her holey shoes. 

“Where’d you learn that one?” Niall asks, still humming under his breath, legs spread in front of him, toes tapping together in rhythm. 

“I, um,” Harry looks down at the ground with the ghost of a smile. “I used to teach music at an elementary school.”

“Oh, that’s adorable,” Leigh-Anne says. She brushes her hands gently over Harry’s shoulders, and his hair dissipates and gets lit up in gold, wispy strands fluttering around them.

Harry hums, gaze gone wistful. “It’s just nice being around kids all day, I think. Watching them learn, y’know? They’re so bright.” 

They sit in silence for a moment, weighted with understanding, and Louis feels a very real dip in his chest, a cold space being slowly filled with a too-warm empathy that makes his eyes sting. 

“Well, _I’m_ not a kid,” Daisy says, leaning forward to poke Harry’s knee. He glances up at her, smiles gently.

“ _Duh_ ,” he says, and she giggles at the way he inclines his head and pulls a face. When she turns to Niall, grabbing his hand to show him a sign, Louis watches the slow way Harry’s smile fades as he watches her, the gradual dullness that crowds his eyes, fingers curling in the grass.

“All done,” Leigh-Anne huffs. “Finally, you look presentable.” 

“Great,” Harry deadpans, but there’s a gratefulness there when he twists his shoulders to look up at her. “Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome.”

Harry puts his fingers into his hair immediately, roughing it up and shaking the loose strands out. It’s trimmed neat now, cropped at the back, soft, curled strands falling across his forehead almost in a short curtain. Dusk is bathing them, sunset blushing them in dark maroons and purples, and under the last remains of the soft sunlight, the edges of Harry’s face glow, the tip of his nose and his cheekbones illuminated, lids pillowy, lips a rose. He looks–. Handsome. Striking. Harry catches his eye when he finally lifts his head, brushing his hair back, and Louis has to look away, tugging up the dry grass until dirt starts to cloud around his legs.

Harry sneezes, loud and unforgiving, and the spell is broken.

He’s quiet for the rest of the night. Over dinner they laze on the ground, lying in a wonky circle as they split their ramen into smaller pieces than before. Daisy’s head is on Louis’ stomach, knees knocking together gently as she watches the sky, the slow ribbon of cloud that floats in a dreamy sweep over them. She looks thoughtful, pulling on the loose threads of her shirt as the sun finally sets and tiny bugs start to buzz around their ears, the still of nighttime bringing them into a slow huddle, climbing back into the truck.

After his watch, Louis can’t fall asleep. Every time he closes his eyes, the phantom echo of thunder, of a gunshot, plunders across the empty earth and towards him, feeling far away but so close. He’s inside the truck with Daisy tonight, Leigh-Anne and Niall curled in the back, and he’s left the windows half-cracked, the smell of damp interior and musk and mud too much to handle in such a confined space. Daisy is a ragdoll against the window, mouth parted, wrists crossed awkwardly. She looks so, so young here in this grainy dark, looks like the tiny girl Louis had chased across their lawn at six o’clock each morning when mom was still in bed, when she’d just started school and Louis helped to get all of the girls ready before mom went to work. 

Swallowing against the nostalgia, he presses his forehead against the cool frame of the window and tries to close his eyes, knees to his stomach. Out on the tarp, the silver of it shiny and lit up by moonlight, Harry has fallen asleep on his watch again. He’s sprawled awkwardly on his back, just a shadow, and Louis sighs, rolling his eyes to the roof of the truck before settling. He won’t wake him, not now. It’s not like Louis was sleeping anyway. 

The night is a quiet rustle, so silent that the distant tinnitus in Louis’ ears feels amplified, sounds like the approach of low flying planes, the high-pitched fuzz before the deep, threatening rumble. It’s this quietness that allows the shaking in Harry’s breath to become audible, the scrunching of fabric under his shifting, and when Louis looks out through the window, his body is curled up, arms drawing inward, murmuring softly. When he starts to cry, the hair on Louis’ arms stand up. 

Harry wakes with a choked sob, a hiccup of breath as he jolts and rolls onto his front, up onto his hands and knees, gasping. One hand comes to his chest, curled into a fist, and he slowly sits back on his calves, his other hand covering his face as he breathes, shoulders curled inward. Louis hears him whisper a strained _fuck_ , legs sliding from underneath him to tuck his knees to his chest, forehead pressed against them.

Louis watches, frozen.

He almost expects the creak of the door that comes.

Daisy is a silver silhouette as she treads quietly around the front of the truck, pausing at the edge of the tarp. Things are so still, and Harry doesn’t acknowledge her presence this time, just keeps his head ducked and his shoulders curled in.

“Harry?” she whispers, tentative as she sits beside him. “Are you alright?”

Harry’s reply is intelligible, just a low hum that Louis has to strain to hear.

“Did you have a bad dream?” Daisy asks quietly. Harry’s shoulders start to shake. “Do you–. D’you want to talk about it? Lou always says talking about it can help.”

“I don’t want to burden you with it, Dais,” Harry says, muffled by his arm. “It’s–. It’s okay.” 

They’re two smudges of blue under the moon, backs facing Louis, curled up together, and he watches the slow way Daisy tilts her head to watch Harry, the sadness laced in her eyes when she rests a careful hand on his shoulder.

“You helped me,” Daisy says. “Now it’s my turn to help you. That’s what friends do.”

Harry remains silent for a long time, nighttime swallowing them up. Louis’ eyes keep losing focus, their figures blurring in and out amongst the shadows of the trees, the bulky elevation of the mesas in the distance. 

“I dreamt about home, in Michigan,” he finally says, the words falling out like he’s fighting to keep them in. “About my family.”

Louis stares out into the darkness, stomach curling into something awful. He wasn’t lying, then. 

“What about them?” Daisy asks. She’s met with silence again, and Harry curls further into himself, hides his face. She’s tiny beside him, a thin waif. After a pregnant beat, she lets out a little breath and leans into his side. “I dream about my mom a lot, too. And my sisters. Louis said–. He told me that they’re going to be okay. They were going to a centre to get new vaccines.”

Harry’s head shifts slightly, navy and silver slanting through his hair when he glances at her. She stares down at her toes. 

“I miss them,” she whispers. Louis’ eyes prickle. 

“You’re very brave,” Harry whispers back. 

Daisy shrugs, tries to be nonchalant and unbothered but even in this gloomy darkness Louis can almost feel the tremble of her chest. She takes in a sharp breath, almost as if to shake it away. “Do you have any brothers and sisters?”

“A sister,” Harry says after a long pause, drawn out tentative and soft. 

“Really?” Daisy brightens at that. “What’s her name?”

“Gemma.”

“What’s she like?” Daisy says dreamily. 

The silence stretches for far too long. Louis closes his eyes, and he knows what’s coming, a cruel twist in his stomach turning everything nauseous and hazy. He wants to open the door, reach forward and pull Daisy away.

“She’s dead, Dais.”

Harry’s voice is a broken, dull thing, glass shattered into atom-sized pieces, thin and regretful and full of a weight that feels heavy enough to drag them all beneath the red dirt and carry the darkness of the night with them.

“Oh,” Daisy exhales, wobbly and full of tears after a bout of palpable silence. “I’m so sorry.” 

“Don’t be,” Harry murmurs. “Not your fault.”

Louis has to look away then, face screwed up as he fights tears, a misty heat settling in his eyes, behind his ears, neck strained as he tries not to breathe too loudly, to interrupt the quiet. He thinks of Harry in that dirty, dusty bedroom, the envelope full of grainy photos and loopy handwriting and a life collected into a tiny pocket of paper. He thinks of the tremble in Harry’s voice, his desperation. _I didn’t choose this_. 

“You can be a part of our family,” Daisy whispers. “If you’d like.”

Harry lets out a tired puff of teary laughter. “Thanks, love. Not sure how Louis would feel about that, though.”

Immediately, guilt swallows Louis whole. The truck feels too small.

“He likes you,” Daisy says, juvenile. “I can tell.”

“Right,” Harry breathes a laugh again. 

“He does,” Daisy insists gently. Her hand finds Harry’s, and she tangles their fingers together. “He just needs–. He needs some time, I think.”

Louis wonders if he could disappear for a moment if he tried hard enough. Among the flush of his cheeks, the rush of sadness that’s still lingering, he tries to recall the moment Daisy became this way, wise and gentle and caring beyond her age, this vibrant young woman, there for him and everyone around her even when the world is doing it’s best to challenge her, to put her down. The tears comes in a slow onset and he wipes them away subtly, keeps his movements slow and silent.   

“You’ll be okay,” Daisy whispers, tucking herself against Harry’s side. Their fingers are still linked. “You’ve got me now, at least.”

Harry glances down at her, moonlight cutting a deep silver along his cheekbone, lining his face with it, and his eyes are shiny, cheeks dewy wet from tears, looking grateful and devastated and full of a hurt that Louis can barely try to understand, but somehow manages to feel in the deepest part of his chest.

Harry presses a soft kiss to the top of Daisy’s head, lingering there, resting his cheek by her temple, eyes closed. 

“Thank you, Dais,” he whispers. “You’ve got me, too.” 

-

The last time Louis spoke to his mom, she’d been driving south. The girls had chattered at him in the backseat when she put him on speaker, and for the first time in the past few weeks he’d flicked the radio off. Daisy was upstairs sleeping, and in the silence of that empty, too-big house, he’d sat at the bottom of the stairs and listened to them all while he tried not to cry, night creeping in and casting shadows on the walls, yellow and brown smudges of curtain lace and flowers. 

His mom had taken him off speaker, and he’d whispered _i’m scared_ before he could stop himself, tearing at a loose flap of carpet. She said exactly what he expected her to say, what he wanted her to say, needed to hear, the warm-honey reassurance of _everything is going to be okay_. 

All he has of her now are memories, these goldspun moments. 

The summer trips they’d take every second year, the little shack they had in Florida before they had to sell, when she’d stand barefoot in the morning and leave the sliding door open, lace curtains billowing in balmy sea wind, her fingers sticky with fruit when she’d chase them down to the beach until their skin glowed gold and shiny. Her eyes in autumn light, the matching scarves they all had, even the twins when they were just tiny, when Mark was still there, a vague and distant thing, and they’d all go to the park together and watch the wind make tiny tornadoes out of the crips auburn leaves, bellowing siren calls in their cupped palms while she watched from the bench, hair whipping around her head. 

When winter came and she made sure his birthday felt special, a whole other level of celebration compared to Christmas, snow and tinsel and the magic sheen of baubles, her warm, gloved hands cupping his cheeks, the gingerbread house they made when he was ten that she let him knock down afterwards, hiding candy inside. The dress she wore every spring, bright white with delicate lace, lemons on vibrant green vines printed, one that Phoebe would steal from her dresser and try on, running around the back garden pretending to be a princess and being yelled at for the grass stains she got on the bottom of the fabric, a new one joining the last each time the flowers bloomed again, mom smiling at her all the same, chasing after her. 

It’s the same with his sisters, the tiny details that manage to slip through the bigger memories, those sticky nights in June when the bugs would cling to the flywire, all the windows open, and they’d clamber together on pale pink comforters, wide, square eyes as they watched cartoons past midnight with mom watching from the kitchen over the top of her book, smiling softly. The moments Louis learned he was going to be a big brother, the first time he held those little girls in his arms, helping his mom paint their rooms, he, Lottie and Fizz all joining in to help with the nursery for the twins, painting wonky ducklings on the doors, faded _m_ birds on the blue wall that Lottie insisted on. 

He envisions it all in these snowglobe dreams, these moments of happiness from his youth, from before, that sometimes manage to leak like spun sugar into his thoughts, turning his teeth fuzzy and his fingers shaky with the rush of it, the sudden bursts of nostalgia, of maudlin. Of melancholy. He sees them all now only in places where things are blurred with a vignette, almost as though he’s looking through a kaleidoscope of rose tinted glass. 

He’d told her _I love you_ , and Daisy had woken by then, shuffling feet coming down the hall. Mom had said it back, an _I love you_ that brought a rush of every moment they’d had together, the life they’d built. 

The line went dead, and Daisy had tucked herself into his side, pressed her face against his ribs, warm from sleep. 

-

Morning breaks fragile and knowing. A whisper.

They roll up the tarp in the dark of pre-dawn, fold their sheets and their stiff clothes and tuck everything back into the truck. Empty the last jerry can. Open the second last bag of ramen. 

In the truck bed, Daisy has her arms spread wide in the wind, tilting side to side like an aeroplane. Niall keeps zapping her sides, making her giggle and slump against him, curling up further when Leigh-Anne joins in too, tickling her until they push her up again, letting her float.

Harry has his chin in his hand, eyes closed, exhaustion hanging heavy beneath them. They’ve been silent since they set off, and Louis has the insignificant, stupid thought that he wishes the radio worked, that he could fill the silence with the old, scratched CD’s he used to load into his own car. Instead, he taps his thumbs anxiously against the ripped leather of the steering wheel and stares straight ahead, watching the landscape blur past them, the dirt they tear up. 

Harry’s skin glows in the morning light, sunburn faded into a shiny tan, cheekbones light and dewy pink. The sun is cutting through the trees, peeking around the mountains, and each time the rays catch his lashes they look like wisps of deep gold, that same blond streak appearing in his hair when the light flickers. His body is slumped, dirty knees tucked into the door, bones of his wrist fragile and thin. Louis gets stuck on the homegrown tattoos cluttered there, the padlock and the curious, faded _99p_ , a key– 

The truck veers too far off the road, tires scraping up a billowing waft of dust, and Harry blinks his eyes open slowly as Louis steadies them, a brilliant flush surely burning his cheeks when Harry glances over. 

The quiet is a heavy thing. Louis has too many questions, about Michigan and how Harry managed to get out of there once Indiana was cut off, how he ended up on the other side of the country like they did, how he found that tiny, abandoned house and why he was there, why he was alone, why he was hoarding all those things. Judging by the look in Harry’s eyes as their gazes skim over each other, he has plenty of his own questions. 

“How are you feeling?” Louis asks, then winces at the stupidity of it, hoping Harry doesn’t think he means he was referring to the night before. He feels invasive enough as it is. 

“Okay,” Harry shrugs one shoulder and thumbs absently at the crease of his arm. “I, um. I’m sorry you had to, like,” he waves an aimless hand, “see that.”

“Don’t apologize,” Louis says, sharper than he intends it to be. “They’re the ones who should be sorry for messing you around like that.”

“Right,” Harry says weakly, staring down at his knees. Louis sighs, thinks back to what Harry said the night before, and he tries to soften his gaze, lets the lines in his forehead relax.

“Look,” he starts, “you don’t have to apologize for everything, you know?”

Harry stares at him, slightly bewildered.

“You’re part of this group now, and…and we have to trust each other,” Louis says softly, scratching awkwardly at his neck. “As much as it’s difficult for me to do that, at first.”

Harry is still staring at him, and he’s striking like this, all his wonky hair cut neat, jaw sloping, lips bright and cracked, eyes gone glass-like and clear from the sunlight. 

“We’re going to end up dead and broken if we don’t trust each other, and that’s not how this works,” Louis says, gesturing in a circular motion between them, between all of them. “We’re each others responsibility.”

It’s the only way he can manage to say _I think I want you here_ without spilling everything, and he feels flushed after it, a little stupid, pulling his gaze away from Harry after he’s finished his spiel, slightly shaky.

Harry looks back out the window. In the rearview mirror, Louis watches the spread of Daisy’s arms, a cracked, tilting image. Her hair is whipping around wildly, pulled from her braids, and it warps around her head in shiny waves, shirt billowing.

“Thank you,” Harry says into the silence, a heavy, weighted thing. He’s still facing the window, but his gaze is lowered, fingers fiddling with the loose pieces of interior by the frame.

Louis nods and keeps his eyes on the road. 

The sun rises from behind the hillside, and everything is frosted in bright gold. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always your feedback is greatly appreciated!! love u all lots and i'll see u here again (hopefully) in two weeks ♡


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I guess I’m more afraid of what I’m leaving behind, not knowing what the future is going to be like. Being forgotten.”_
> 
> _They sat in silence for a moment, just the brush of seafoam between them. Zayn had nudged his shoulder gently, and when he leant away their skin brushed and stayed like that, skimming each time they breathed. “I wouldn’t forget about you, if it’s any consolation.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiiii pals. 
> 
> this is kind of a spoilery note so feel free to skip over but: from here onwards, all major warnings mentioned in the tags apply. 
> 
> i can't wait to share the next few chapters with you all. sorry about the wait on this one, it's been a tough few weeks
> 
> ♡

There was a period of time after his grandma died where Louis had brief night terrors, twisted dreams with odd, strange lights that shadowed his consciousness in off greens and murky yellows. Often, he found that he couldn’t move, that his wrists were tied down, or that his body was simply just paralyzed, rigid and cold staring up at a white ceiling. There was always the distant beep of machines, staggered and lurching, the same sounds the toys in Lottie’s crib made when the batteries started to die, something innocent turned spine tinglingly sinister. 

He could never move his head, could only see the wires and tubes in his thin arms in his peripheral vision, the whirring and pumping of machines echoing dull into the vacant room. For a while it was just that, Louis stuck with his eyes wide open and terrified as his mind drifted through a fog until he eventually thrashed himself awake, pajamas covered in sweat, his mom’s fingers brushing back his hair. Then there was the movement, the shadows dragging themselves up the walls, onto the ceiling in odd shapes. Brittle fingers on the insides of his wrists. A clammy palm against his forehead.

He used to think they were doctors, white coats and tall figures that got silhouetted by the sticky lights, but then they’d shift, duck in close and shine something white-hot against his eyes, and when he blinked through the dots there’d be a monster staring back at him, the kind he’d see on TV before mom banned him from watching them, when he snuck downstairs in the middle of the night to hide in the blankets because he couldn’t sleep at all for the first few weeks. 

She always blamed that as the start of it, the black & white noir horror that fuzzed the edges of the screen, creepy-crawlies and fangs and flickering shadows, murderers and broken mirrors and muffled screams for help. But she’d still curl around him each time he woke up, wouldn’t scold him even when he would wake Lottie after she’d finally fallen into a peaceful sleep. She’d just kiss his clammy forehead and whisper _everything is going to be okay_ until Louis finally blinked away the tears.

That was when he first started sleep-talking, too. Those were the worst dreams, the ones with the monsters that weren’t afraid to show themselves, to grin with prickly teeth and tap playful fingers along the trembling bones of his ankles. Mom would always carry him back to her bed so he could burrow under the fluffy sheets, and in the morning she’d try to ask him who he was talking to, if there was something she should know, if someone was trying to hurt him outside of his dreams that she didn’t know about.

But Louis just shook his head, because he wanted to be brave. He thought he had to be brave. He didn’t want to talk about the monsters, and he didn’t want to make his mom worry more, especially about the monsters that made him wake up crying, the ones that lingered outside the windows and wanted to hurt him and his family, his friends. It got better when his mom reluctantly let him sleep with her, nose tucked under the rose-coloured sheets, the smell familiar and encasing and an illusion of protection from something that was in his own head. 

The dreams faded away, but they never entirely left. They became less explicit, less crystal clear and more vague, blurry around the edges. Sometimes he would dream of nothing at all but still blink awake into the pitch dark with the feeling that someone or something was watching him, a cold honey drip down his spine when he stared up at the ceiling of his bedroom and felt that familiar swoop low in his stomach, toes curling when he looked to the window and watched the street-light shadows of thin branches scraping against the glass like sharp nails. He still talked in his sleep, mumbled intelligible things in the half-dark, sometimes whispers that had his mom shaking at his shoulders, blinking down at him with something unreadable in her expression, this glaze of worry and pause, the same way she’d looked in the halls of the hospital months ago.

Louis worried about that more than anything, talking in his sleep. There was never any control over it, always a sense of impending anxiety that he’d be stuck staring at that ceiling again at any moment, that he’d say something sinister and twisted, something fragile and afraid. He didn’t want to be the kid at the sleepover who slept in the corner and mumbled about the wires in his arms, about the strange creatures prowling in the shadows of the living room while they all hid under their covers. 

Whenever his mom would pick him up from Stan’s house in the morning he’d be a complete and utter terror, moody and mad and tremulous with an incoming tantrum at the slightest hint of things not going his way because he spent the entire night sitting up and playing with the frayed edges of the blankets, staring at the fuzzy-gold reflections the lamp left in the TV and waiting for the images there to warp, feet fidgeting back and forth whenever Stan would shift in his sleep and make the shadows in the room shift too. Afraid to fall asleep. Afraid to stay awake. Biting his nails down to stumps and digging his toes down into the mattress over and over again until they cramped.

Exhaustion would overtake him though, sometimes. Those too-warm days spent riding their bikes around the park and launching themselves off the swings to make marks in the mulch left Louis’ bones weary, belly full of candy and caramel popcorn with his eyes blinking heavily against the fluorescent glow of the TV, their mattresses pushed together so they could spread out the sweets they’d stolen from the kitchen between them. One moment Louis would be shovelling sticky kernels past his lips, and the next he’d be blinking awake into the stuffy air of the living room, sunlight pushing at the curtains and blushing the walls dark yellow. 

Stan used to say it was cool, that it was like having a conversation in their own language, nonsense, because he could never predict what Louis would say next. Just that to Stan, it was funny. _You’ve got a sixth sense_ , he used to tease over waffles the next morning, squirting his honey in obnoxious spirals all over his plate and laughing at the way Louis’ face darkened, the way he flicked his eyes away and flushed bright red, swallowed down a wave of embarrassed tears. Stan didn’t mean to make him upset, he knew. But it made Louis feel still so incredibly juvenile and young; he’d always been the shortest in his class, the runt, loud and a little annoying because he thought he had to make up for that. 

There were older boys that picked on him at school sometimes, boys in his own class even though they thought he was funny, the class clown. Nobody could know about it. It felt like the worst thing in the world, a terrible secret, something that other kids would tease him about even though his mom always assured him it wasn’t that uncommon to have nightmares like he did, to talk in his sleep. So Louis made Stan promise not to tell, keeping his watery eyes on his knees because he didn’t want to be teased for crying about it, too. 

Eventually it stopped all together, petered out as he grew up and grew out of being frightened by ridiculous films from the 40s. He never stopped worrying about it though, not really. There would be moments when he’d wake up and turn over, years later, and Stan would already be awake and watching him. Stan never said anything else though, never shook Louis awake in the dark because he’d been whispering _run away, be safe, away from the windows, there’s something coming, safe-safe-safe_. Louis would still flush dark and turn over, feigning nonchalance in case he’d let something slip after all. 

He doesn’t sleep now, not really. He can fall into fits and starts of rest when his body shuts down, but really he thinks its because he won’t let himself go deep enough to uncover all those forgotten places. It’s almost conditioned, the state of being awake in the dark. When it was still just him and Daisy, he isn’t sure if he ever slept for longer than an hour at a time, too afraid of what might happen, terrified by the thought of being unable to protect her, even for just a second. He’d never be able to forgive himself if he closed his eyes and let the dark take her, the monsters from his childhood manifested into something beyond his imagination. 

And that was the other thing, too. Being terrified of what might happen if he were to let himself sleep properly now, to fall into those deep cycles and pray that the terrors would keep themselves quiet, the ones easily irked and provoked, the ones that would be ferocious and frightening and gruesome, far worse than what they ever had been. It was something he came to accept, gradually, once everything fell to pieces. No matter how tired his body would become, the moment he shut his eyes it was like he had a shining target pinned to his chest. Afraid to fall asleep. Afraid to stay awake. 

He never really thought he’d sleep properly again, not until that stale little room by the sea. And it wasn’t really the room, either, nor the lumpy couch he claimed as his, the one with the three springs that dug into his thigh, lower back and shoulder, that smelt of dust and made his skin itch. It wasn’t the illusion of safety, definitely wasn’t the gripping silence. 

In the end, it was the sheets, Louis thinks. Not his own, the one thrown over the back of the couch that was just as scratchy as the fabric itself, but the ones on the bed, the way they’d cradle the heat that curled through the windows during the day, they way they fluttered over their shoulders and settled. It might have just been the way those hands never shook him awake, never panicked him, the way that the sunlight broke through the ripped curtains and Louis would blink heavily into the morning, heart speeding up at the sleepy crust that cracked his inner corners, the heaviness of his head after a night of rest. 

A warm palm on his back, smooth fingers, a look that meant maybe, in that space between them, whatever Louis had said or not said didn’t matter at all. All of those vulnerabilities were cradled so close that they had nowhere to fall, no chance to break, and maybe that illusion of safety was almost as good as the real thing in the end, like being back home, being under those soft pink sheets that smelt like detergent and dusk during spring, like mom’s perfume. 

_Safe. Away from the windows. We’re safe._

-

Louis wakes on their third day in Arkansas to Harry looming over him, hands on his shoulders.

His shadow is blocking out the sun, sharp and bright for so early in the morning, and he’s just a smudge of a silhouette, backlit in peach and soft white as the sky yawns into life. Louis blinks jerkily, slightly breathless, and shrugs Harry off as he leans up onto his elbows, trying to wade his way through the dream he’s obviously just been broken from, yearning after the whispers that are drifting like an echo up and away from him, fingers digging into the bed of the truck, searching for sand, for warm sheets, for the firm mattress.

“Sorry,” Harry fumbles, still half leant over Louis’ body, forearms brushing his hip, his knee, awkward limbs bent. “You were–. You were talking in your sleep.” 

Louis flicks his eyes away sharply, swallowing. 

Daisy still says Zayn’s name under her breath in whispers, the same way she did when they were still in California and she’d started to tuck herself under his sheets when they heard noises at night. She never mentions it, none of them do, but Harry is looking at him with too much curiosity and Louis isn’t quite prepared to deal with that this early, possibly ever. 

He’s exhausted and thirsty and Harry’s warm body is still blocking out the sunlight, leaning over him, blinking slow and gentle and he’s so close and it’d be so easy for Louis to just touch him and let himself burn.

They’ve lost two full days now at the expense of looting, digging and combing careful and slow through every tiny town they run through in the search for morsels of anything. They’ve drifted past the places that have been levelled to nothing but rubble, nothing but the smell of death and rot, decayed bodies lingering, houses with holes ripped straight through the middle, the truck shaking and rattling over the crater sized potholes. They’ve been cautious with it all, too. Nothing can ever prepare them for finding the bodies of those left behind, the few immunes who are both blessed and cursed with fading away and mingling with the holistic nothingness that encapsulates these dead places. 

“Who’s Zayn?” Harry says, still looming over Louis’ body. A shock of cold-hot streams through the veins around Louis’ wrists, up into this elbows, slowly pouring into his chest. 

Louis sits up and shoves Harry away, refuses to meet his eye when his breath jolts lightly with the force of it. He refuses to think of how warm Harry’s chest had felt under his palms. “Nobody.”

A tense, terse moment of silence passes between them, gritty, and Louis feels turned inside-out, like an exposed, raw nerve. Harry is still too close to him, body slanted awkwardly, leant on his knees.

“He’s nobody,” Louis mutters.

He pries the matchbox and knife from his pocket slowly. Harry finally retracts, crawling backwards on his hands and reaching for his notebook amongst the tangled piles of their mismatched belongings. Quiet finally settles, just the flicker of thick, water-clogged pages and the gentle scratch of cardboard fraying. Louis finds himself watching, following the shift of the sinew in Harry’s hands, the shift of his delicate bones as he writes, looks at the bent paper clips and the coloured paper spilling, the thick pocket of the envelope wedged between the back cover and the last few pages, safe. He can’t help it, the hypocritical curiosity he wishes they could both extinguish.

“How did you get out of Michigan?” The words tumble from his lips before he can trap them. 

Harry pauses, pencil going still. They always seem to be doing this, asking each other a question and deflecting defensively, tersely, only to ask another minutes later. Harry says nothing for a long time, looking down at his notebook. He looks ashen, eyes glazed with a shiny guard, protecting something that he obviously doesn’t want Louis to see. But Louis really can’t help but be curious, because most of the east coast was destroyed save for those little pockets in Virginia and New York, the fortress that’s become D.C. Michigan and Indiana were some of the firsts states to go, a hellzone of bombs and the undead rising too fast, disease and grit and buildings reduced to nothing but fiery rubble, entire states reduced to that encapsulated nothing. 

As soon as Indiana was quarantined, he imagines that Michigan wasn’t far behind, if not first. It would have been cut off completely once Indiana became a bombsite. 

“I don’t remember,” Harry says softly. He’s still staring down at his notebook, colouring the corner of his page softly in grey, a light touch so that he doesn’t waste the lead. Louis wants to call him out, be terrible and call bullshit, but when he thinks back on half the memories he has of leaving Indiana there are still fuzzy parts that he doesn't recall, these blank spaces and voids that he can never fill. Harry’s brow is furrowed, troubled, and something ugly settles in Louis’ stomach as he watches Harry shade a triangular tornado with his shaky hands. He inhales sharply. “How long are we staying here?”

“We’ll start moving soon,” Louis says, but Harry isn’t done.

“We need to keep going,” he says, antsy, shutting the notebook clumsily. “Push through.”

“There’ll be nothing to push with if we can’t find more fuel,” Louis says calmly, not rising to the bait of Harry’s quiet franticness. There’s a tick to his jaw, and that alone is beginning to set Louis on edge. “ _Harry._ Calm down, yeah?” 

He’s trying to be gentle, because Harry’s fingers are curling over his knees, tips digging into his sunburnt skin. “Yeah–. I…sorry. Christ.”  

“We’ll get there fast as we can, alright?” Louis breathes evenly, in and out, one, two, one, two. Slow. 

“I know,” Harry scratches at his jaw, twitchy, runs a fumbling hand through his cropped hair, looking around them in a slow sweep, blinking quickly. “It’s been so quiet. I can’t stand the quiet.” 

Louis watches him, the cracks in his lips and the thin film of mist he keeps blinking away, the shuddery rise and fall of his ribs under the worn-soft of his stained shirt.

“It’s been so quiet,” he repeats, looking down to his knees.

There’s a certain strangeness that comes with things around them being filtered in green. The dust and the red dirt is just a hazy strip in the distance, a dull trickle of it trailing in their wake, but the road they’re on now is spanned by tall, looming trees, surprisingly lush, cartoonish against the blue sky, almost out of place after so long of nothing but concrete and plateaus and empty space. It’s still humid, morning pouring down like a steamy oil slick and coating everything harshly now, that soft white gone startlingly raw and bright, turning the metal of the truck bed into a searing iron. Amongst all that, the abnormality of vegetation, is the quiet. Because Harry is right, it has been quiet. It’s always quiet, the earth turning hesitantly, holding its breath, but it always becomes amplified in these moments, in those dead, empty places. There’s a lot of dead, empty places now. 

The more he pauses and tries not to think about it, the more anxious he feels. There’s that tinnitus fuzz rattling his skin, and it feels like he’s waiting, waiting for a plane to surge up out of nowhere and strip the leaves from the trees, to drop parcels of death and destruction and destroy everything in an explosion of flames and dirt. Now that Harry has mentioned the silence, something that’s always omnipresent, it squeezes him with palpable hands from all sides. 

“It’ll be alright,” Louis says, and he nudges Harry’s shin with his knuckle gently before he can stop himself, a knee-jerk reaction of comfort, brushing the soft skin there. He retracts his hand immediately and tucks it against his stomach, crossing his arms. 

Harry smiles softly at him, glum and waning the moment his lips quirk, eyes ducked, lashes shifting. It was such a superfluous thing to say, and he hates himself more and more every time he says anything like that, every time he has to tell Daisy that things will be okay, that they’re okay when they never really are. He wishes he didn’t have to fall back onto it, those meaningless words that hardly do anything to reassure anyone.

But then Harry is looking at him like he knows, like despite there being absolutely no weight behind the words, the fact that they’re there at all could still mean something.

-

They make only half an hour of movement before the first plane flies overhead, a distant rumble that builds and builds and builds until the thrum of it passing is a physical weight, a thudding kick in the chest. Louis is crouched and sorting through the dusty, cobweb ridden insides of a tiny abandoned shed, the air inside unbearably stuffy and hot, fingers covered in grease. Harry is across the tiny space, knees scraping on the concrete from where he’s trying to awkwardly unlatch an old cabinet. There are tiny slats of piercing, white-hot light that pour like scars through holes in the tin roof. 

Louis doesn’t hear the beginnings of it, everything inside the shed muffled and damp, Harry rattling the cabinet, slamming his palms against its side, the metal ringing out chillingly in the quiet. He starts to feel it though, starts to feel that buzz under his hands, the rattle of his ribs in his chest like they’re about to untwist and come loose like rusty bolts. He pauses, and finally Harry does to, and when they peer through the door outside they’re shot from their heads to their toes with the shuddering pulse of a jet flying low to the ground, pulling a huge, wide circle before it lifts again, leaving a wispy contrail. It’s hazy and begins to drift into a wrinkled cloud, and the rumble of the plane stays cradled in his chest even when it’s out of sight. 

Niall is leaning out the window of the truck, Leigh-Anne alert in the back, a hand wrapped loosely around her shotgun as she gazes up at the sky. They remain still until the contrail starts to dissipate into a translucent mist. There’s sweat stuck along Louis’ neck, dirt under his nails, and he closes his eyes for a moment. He doesn’t want to think about what it means. 

“Should we go?” Harry says quietly from behind him, breath brushing cool over Louis’ skin, his hand brushing Louis’ arm.

“Yeah,” Louis says after a moment, pulling away. “Let’s go.” 

-

He can never pinpoint the exact moment it started.

There was always this unspoken rule when they were in California, something that was never made explicit but always seemed like an iron fist of restriction the moment they were shuffled off the bus. They weren’t supposed to go out at night, and Louis always saw the reasoning behind that, because the darkness and the quiet and that stillness that comes with bodies being vulnerable and asleep always held that illusion of danger lurking, of the undead waiting for them to go still so they could prey. And they did, sometimes. There were some nights when Zayn would leave the window open accidentally, and there would be those muffled, displaced screams in the distance, the ones that would cut off suddenly, the muted eruption of gunfire, and then the silence took over again. 

Louis never held a desire to escape their little room at night, not when everything and everyone else was closed up inside and it was just him and the lumbering figures that lingered like half-formed shadows, the rotten gurgles of the undead lingering, waiting. He doesn’t remember when it was, how long they’d been suffocating in that tiny room and waiting for something, _anything_ , to happen, when Zayn had woken one night for a cigarette, stayed at the window until it burnt down to the filter and the room smelt like fading smoke, and then he remained still once he’d flicked the bud down onto the street. He’d leant his forehead on his crossed arms, staring out into the night towards the beach, all these streaks of silvery blue washing him out, slanting across the ground and into Louis’ bleary, half-awake eyes. 

“Hey,” he whispered, but it may has well have been a bomb dropping. Thus far, he’d always pretended to be asleep when Zayn would wake. Zayn had looked back at him over his shoulder, still all hunched up and bowed under moonlight. “You okay?”

Zayn shrugged and looked back outside. Louis sat up.

He crossed the room silently, and when he reached Zayn’s side, they finally looked at each other. He can still recall that moment amongst the fuzziness of others, and he doesn’t know why. Zayn’s eyes had gone shiny like glass, lashes wispy silver, and the thick of his brows hung these soft shadows over his gaze. Louis paused by the sill, fingers lingering by Zayn’s elbow, barely brushing skin. He was captivating in that light, always looked softest at night when things could blur and blend together and the exhaustion and terror and helplessness that lay under that projected calmness he always had suddenly disappeared. On that night, his cheeks were dewy with the ghost of tears brushed away, and Louis had touched his arm gently, gingerly. 

“You sure?” 

“Yeah,” Zayn sighed, and he nudged himself closer, so that he and Louis were pressed together by the window. “I just feel–. Trapped, sometimes. Everything here is so…”

He never explained what _everything_ was, but Zayn had looked at him then, mouth pulled into a thin line, and missing was that sardonic, aloof nature. It was a face bare and Louis had understood it then, understood it not with words but with a feeling. 

“Do you want to take a walk with me?” Zayn said, and he had that glint to his eye that he always carried when he asked questions, that glint he’d given Daisy, a flicker. The glint that carried the secrets on the tip of Zayn’s tongue that maybe never existed but made Louis want to part his mouth and peek inside just to see for himself. He was always drawn to it, a moth to flame, drawn to that spark of life that Zayn put into a place so dull. 

The beach at night was a new world. It was as though the moment Louis stepped off the boardwalk and hit the sand, the world around him warped and shifted into a foreign planet, this outer space daydream that they’d escaped to. They’d sit tucked under the boardwalk on those nights, huddled against it’s splintered edges and shifting the grains through their fingers, skin bathed blue, watching the dark water flutter on the shoreline like a heartbeat. It was in that little alcove that they uncurled for each other, slowly, hesitantly, whispering back and forth until the first films of yellow started to blush on the horizon and they’d peek their head up and over the boardwalk, blink their sleepy, sandy eyes before they’d slink back up to the tiny apartment with the backs of their hands brushing, never saying a word.

It reminded Louis of Florida, the normality of those times, the beach house when he was a boy when summertime would blossom and he’d stay up late because school was over, and then later, when he’d gotten his license and could drive by himself, those first fumbled kisses he’d had in the backseat with the sky blood-red like fire and burning his already warm cheeks, when he drove to a beach party and met the first boy he ever kissed, tongues sticky with sea water because they were bobbing together in the waves and the ebb of it pulled them together. Each time he and Zayn touched the sand he was struck with those moments, the feeling of them.

Their knees would knock gently while they talked and tried to understand each other, and he’d never opened himself up to anyone the way he did with Zayn, a flower pod blossoming and reaching so desperately for sunlight, dewy with vulnerability, and with Zayn he was never scared of that vulnerability. He had a way of convincing Louis that they were the only two people in that place, that the illusion of keeping themselves hidden was wasted when their time was so short, when either of them could be gone at any moment. 

Those nights are some of his most vivid memories now, hidden and tucked among the foggy, hazy saturation of everything else that often veils those gems, the conversations and touches he has to go digging for, but once they’re discovered are a kaleidoscope-rush of detail. And that night, the first night they’d dared to take that walk together and explore that alien planet, tentative and shy with each other, they were still trying to figure out the depths of one another without plunging into the water and getting tangled in whatever lay at the bottom. 

“I wish we had a boat,” Louis said, superfluous, because anything that involved _I wish_ often was. Still is. “We could sail away, find a remote island. Live off coconuts.” 

Zayn had laughed, a soft chuckle, blinking at Louis as he did so with a heady sweep of lashes. “Coconuts?”

“Yeah,” Louis smiled. “We could escape and just live off coconuts. Sounds like a dream.”

Zayn hummed and flicked at little mound of sand, resting his chin against his knee and watching the water. “It’s kind of ironic, how trapped we are. For me, at least.”

“Why?” Louis leant forward slightly, wrapped his arms around his shins. It was always unnerving, saying _trapped_ and _escape_ in conversation, because it was almost like they were held captive there. Sometimes, Louis thinks they were.

“I grew up here,” Zayn said, this dark edge to his voice when he flicked the sand again before digging his toes beneath it. “I couldn’t wait to leave. I’ve always wanted to go up north and just hide in the snow. Living here was always so…much. And now I’ll never be able to get away.”

“That’s not true,” Louis said, and he tried to make a joke, to bring something lighter to the dark that was edging them because he was like that in the beginning, wasn’t so cynical and faded and broken. “We can swim away. Swim right up the coast until our balls fall off from how cold the water is.”

Zayn’s gaze had lowered further, a sticky, dejected smile forming on his features, and he laughed, a huff of a thing. “I’m afraid of water,” he said. “I don’t even know how to swim.”

“You grew up on the beach and you never learned how to swim?” Louis blinked at him.

“Told you it was ironic,” Zayn said. He flicked his toes up in the sand this time, and the grains sprayed like mist. “What are you afraid of?”

_Everything_ , Louis almost said, almost let it spill when Zayn met his gaze and the moon frosted his lashes, and it would have been so easy just to cry and swear and let everything out.

“Death,” Louis said, fiddling with the snapped lace on his shoe, averting his gaze.

“Isn’t everyone?” Zayn raised a slow brow.

“Maybe,” Louis shrugged, and he crossed his wrists, held onto the tips of his shoes and watched the waves. “I guess I’m more afraid of what I’m leaving behind, not knowing what the future is going to be like. Being forgotten.”

They sat in silence for a moment, just the brush of seafoam between them. Zayn had nudged his shoulder gently, and when he leant away their skin brushed and stayed like that, skimming each time they breathed. “I wouldn’t forget about you, if it’s any consolation.” 

“Thanks,” Louis said flatly, rolling his eyes as they fell into soft laughter. It settled into weighted silence though, the two of them looking out in the the huge expanse of nighttime, and Louis couldn’t help but wonder about all those people who were already forgotten, those nameless faces unidentifiable beneath the rot, the bodies buried under the rubble of cities that once were. Gone.

“What about water?” Louis said, glancing at Zayn again. “Is it–. Are you just afraid of drowning?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Zayn said, tracing the sand with his finger, making a wonky spiral. “It’s supposedly peaceful, right?”

“Supposedly,” Louis said. “You’d still have to get to the point of drowning beforehand, though. Are you afraid of that?”

“Maybe,” Zayn shrugged. “I think it’s almost, like–. I know that the ocean isn’t trying to swallow me, you know? It’s just there and its purpose isn’t to hurt me. But it could. Maybe it doesn’t want to, but it could. And I think I’m just afraid of that. Not knowing whether I’m going to end up hurt or drowning until I actually go in.”

-

The silence in the truck is tense. Trees are flying by them, Niall’s foot pressed right down on the accelerator, and it seems they’re all blatantly ignoring the place where the fuel gage has dipped well into red. They must be running on reserve by now, and with each whir of the engine Louis’ stomach sinks lower. Around them, there’s still nothing but trees and sky, open, empty space. If they don’t find somewhere to settle before the truck dies, they aren’t going to make it much further out here. 

The circling of planes has done nothing to ease any tension. There have been three, total, within the past few hours, two following the jet that had circled the shed, and they’d been even lower, had lingered and turned and swung in steady loops before finally disappearing. Niall’s hands are white-knuckled on the wheel, brow and mouth set stoically, and Daisy is between them, kicking her toes together anxiously, obviously aware of what’s going on. In the back, Harry and Leigh-Anne are just as quiet. Louis can only see the tops of their shoulders, both of them lying with a dirty sheet over their heads to shield themselves from the biting sun. 

Distantly, the reality of it all is gnawing at Louis’ mind, the instistant _tick-tick-tick_ that’s been looping around his head since Arizona flaring up again, a dull tap that makes his temples throb. They still have so much ground to cover, and it’ll take them weeks to make that distance on foot, longer once the exhaustion sets in. They can’t carry all their supplies, and walking in the heat will be the first thing to do them in, the sunburn and the sweat and the dehydration. Daisy won’t make it if they lose the truck now, none of them will. He’s trying not to think about it. 

“Lou,” Daisy rasps, leaning into him. “I’m so thirsty.” 

“I know, darling,” Louis tucks her into his side, brushes her wispy hair back from her face. “We’ll stop soon, alright? Next place we find, we can have a drink.”

She makes a hurt noise, sagging into him. “I need it now.”

“Dais,” Louis says, but then she’s leaning further into him, whole body gone like a deadweight.

“Please,” she says, and she punches at his leg lightly, knocks her head into his shoulder.

“You’re a tough one, Dais,” Niall glances over, ruffles the back of her head. “We’re almost there, I bet.” 

Louis doesn’t expect it when she starts to cry, but maybe he should have, and he feels dread latch itself onto his chest. She’s exhausted, face gone completely flushed just from the exertion of letting herself be emotional, and she falls sideways into Louis’ lap, knocks her knuckles into his leg again.

“Ssh, love,” Louis kisses her temple, swallows thickly. “I know, Dais. I know. It’s okay.”

“I hate this,” she whispers fiercely, hands turned into fists, tucked under her chest. She sniffs, wipes at her wet, swollen eyes. 

“Maybe we should stop,” Louis says, glances at Niall. “It’s nearly been an hour.”

“Not yet,” Niall says. “We’re on the last few bottles, too. Can’t run out of everything.”

Louis sighs, lets his teeth clench together for just a moment. Niall is right. He is, but Daisy’s back is heaving and everything just feels so wrong. “Ni, just pull over. It’ll only take a second.”

“I don’t want to let up on the gas,” Niall counters. The skin on his forehead is peeling, sunburn fresh and bright red, cradled on his neck and his under eyes too, and they’re both sweating. Everything feels too hot inside. 

“Niall–”

“Louis,” Niall cuts him off, gives him a look. “We just need to keep moving as far as we can for now, alright?”

They stare at each other for so long. It feels as though there’s no air, all of it replaced by suffocating heat.  

“Yeah,” Louis finally relents, turning back to the road. His heart lurches into his throat. “ _Stop!_ ”

Niall slams the brakes. There’s the thump of Harry and Leigh-Anne being thrown forward in the back, the piercing screech of the tires on the tar. If Louis wasn’t holding onto Daisy, she’d have flown forward into the dash. Everything freezes, dust settling around them, and Louis’ chest is heaving, stuck in this stilted, terrified place. 

“Oh, Christ,” Niall whispers. The truck is gurgling, engine stuttering from being pulled so sharply to a stop, trying to scrape at the last drops of fuel. 

Ahead, from between the slips in the trees, the undead are appearing like shadows. 

The dirty, rank smell of a dead planet is always present, but Louis is aware of it differently now, aware that it’s begun to flood his senses, that the rot and the stillness around them has a place now, a place in the lumbering, decaying bodies that are tumbling onto the road, drawn to the sound of the engine like moth to flame. It looks like there’s an entire hoard of them, bodies trailing out from the treeline in a slow, stitled stream. 

“Niall!” Leigh-Anne calls, hitting the top of the roof. Louis twists in his seat, and panic flares into his chest when he sees the undead lingering behind them, surrounding them. Closing in.  

_They’ve been herding the fuckers like cattle_.

“We have to–” Niall is shaking. “We have to go back.”

“We can’t,” Louis shakes his head, twists in his seat again. Harry and Leigh-Anne have their shotguns in hand, pressed right up against the window. 

“Louis,” Daisy’s got an iron-grip on his arm, trembling, tears already staining her cheeks.  

“Fuck,” Niall spits, running both hands through his hair. The truck is still running idle. “Fucking _hell_.” 

“Niall,” Louis starts, and then they’re both just looking at each other, breathless. Daisy is crying and he’s got three fucking shots left in his gun and the undead are so close now, a sweltering, disgusting mass of snarled teeth. Leigh-Anne is shouting and Harry hits the top of the truck and someone is screaming _move, fucking move_ , and then there’s a ripple in the crowd of lost bodies and the undead are lurching towards them. 

Niall hits the accelerator with such force that the truck jolts in a stop-start, propelling them forward jerkily. They veer sideways, their bodies sliding, undead being crushed and slammed backward, and then they’re pulsing through a gap in the trees, wheels skidding and scraping over roots. Branches slap and scratch and scream against the windows. The sudden movement has sparked some twisted kind of life into the undead, and they’re alert now, chasing them down. They’re faster than they look, aren’t deterred by the branches that slice at their skin. 

The horrid, echoing gurgle of them can be heard even with their windows up. Like the trees around them they’re grey and peeling, skin like shreds of cracked bark, mindless with their movements, throwing their entire weight into the truck, up onto the truck bed to try and reach at Harry and Leigh-Anne. There’s the sound of one of their shotguns firing, and that’s what cements the panic in Louis’ mind more than anything, the need for gunfire, the need to protect themselves through the permanent ending and destruction of something else. 

Daisy is muffling her cries into Louis’ shirt, the fabric wet with saliva as she clings to him, almost chokes him with how tightly she’s hanging on. The truck starts to gurgle, this horrid, grating sound, tires lurching.

“No, _no_ ,” Niall pounds his fist against the wheel. His eyes are glazed. The undead are a never ending swarm now, hurtling their bodies forward with such force that their rotten, giving skin leaves streaks on the windows, blood that’s almost black, like it’s flaked with rust and gunk. There’s bile in Louis’ throat and tears in his eyes and then with a painfully awkward _thunk_ , the truck becomes wedged between two trees, their bodies all flying forwards.

The undead are on them within seconds. 

Pale, broken fingers press against the glass, crawl over the bonnet until Louis is face-to-face with the gaping nothingness of their eyes, the purple rot that clings to their cheeks, everything bloodshot and blue-veined. The stench of it is physical, fingers pinched over his nose to cut off his breathing. Niall is slamming his foot down onto the accelerator over and over with frantic, panicked breaths, chest heaving with the strength of the motion. There’s another gunshot from the back, Harry shouting something unintelligible under the groaning, chittering swarm of the undead leering at them, circling them, waiting them out for the opportune moment to strike, inherently sinister. 

They rock the truck forward in a panic, necks straining with the force of trying to push themselves forward. What’s left of the engine is roaring now, hoarse groans under the pressure of Niall’s foot. Finally, by some miracle, or perhaps by the force of the undead swarming them, they shoot through the gap. Almost immediately they slam into another tree, and Louis is half-crushed under the weight of the door, arm gone numb and tingly from the force of it. A rogue branch shatters through the passenger window and sends glass cracking and spraying. He covers Daisy’s body, the two of them sliding as Niall attempts to right the truck, bumping over tree roots and bodies. The bonnet is splattered with infection and dead skin.

They swerve, swerve again, the body of the truck ricocheting off thick trunks, the gaps becoming thinner. There’s nowhere for them to go, nowhere but deeper into the trees, and soon they won’t be able to move at all. It washes over Louis in an icy chill that feels so cold it could be hot, could be burning, like his veins are entirely on fire but so frozen that he’s paralysed, unable to do anything but try and take in his surroundings and feel the familiarity of Daisy’s skin and come to terms with the fact that this could be it, that it might finally be over. 

The truck skids to a stop.

“Fuck,” Niall breathes. 

The river before them is roaring, white caps pushing against the sides of the banks like the water is trying to escape. It’s a thundering pulse, rushing and weaving and tumbling with such dangerous motion that Louis feels ill looking at it. Fear has latched itself onto his throat, and he’s about to choke on it now, chest empty of air when mangled hands reach through the shattered glass. 

It’s a steep drop straight down into the water, the bank eroded into almost nothing, and they’re being pushed forward by the force of the undead, the swarm of them around the bed of the truck. Harry and Leigh-Anne are shouting at them but Louis can’t make out the words under the gurgles and the snarls, can only see the two of them smashing their way through bodies with the butt of their guns, almost climbing up onto the roof to get away from the unrelenting swarm of the undead. 

“ _Move!_ ” Leigh-Anne is screaming, wet-eyed and distraught and covered in blood when she whirls towards them. “ _Move! Move!_ ”

There’s nowhere to go.

The truck lurches closer to the edge.

“I have to drive her in,” Niall says, stricken, and Louis is already shaking his head, lips sucked back into his mouth, panic making his eyes swell with hot tears. He pushes back reflexively into his seat as they tilt, clings closer to Daisy. “Lou, I _have to_. I have to lose her.” 

Louis can’t speak, can’t let go of the screaming _no-no-no_ that’s threatening to burst through his chest. They’re lost without the truck, they’re stuck, starved, and who knows what’s waiting for them on the other side, who knows if they’ll survive the weight of the water, if they’ll survive whatever is next. Louis flinches away from the shattered window, rotting arms reaching through for him, purple and green skin, swollen like an all encapsulating bruise. The stench of rot and death has his eyes burning, and in the place their eyes once were, there’s nothing but redness and puss and mold, nothing but an empty lifelessness and the snarl of a creature unconsciously desperate to hurt them. 

“Dais, look at me,” Louis cradles Daisy’s cheeks roughly. She’s panicked, gone white as a sheet, and her skin is slippery under his fingers, eyes swollen from her pinched crying. Automatically her own thin fingers latch desperately onto his wrists, trying to pull him closer. “ _Daisy_.”

She’s trembling, chest shaking violently. Nothing leaves her mouth but another choked cry, almost a scream, a wail.

“Listen to me. _Listen_. Keep your mouth closed, okay? Keep your mouth closed,” he says, frantic, the words falling from his lips in a slur, and he shakes her gently, tries to keep her flitting, frightened eyes on him. The water won’t infect her, but if she swallows too much she’ll suffocate. “Everything is going to be okay. Everything is—“ 

The truck tilts over the edge.

It’s nothing like the movies, when they hit the river. There’s no slow rise of the water coming in, no tension filled minutes of the heroes gasping for an escape. It feels almost like a moment frozen, like in that singular second during the trucks suspension, Louis is pulled out of his body and is watching from a distance, from above them, transcending himself into a safer place, watching the events unfold with no way of stopping them from happening. A lone chill drips down the centre of his spine.

The second the windshield makes contact with the water, it splinters into hundreds of jagged shards. The water floods in, and with it, carries the glass in a tidal wave of rushing foam, skidding against their skin. Louis only hears the first unsettling, pained cry of Daisy yelping before the river covers their heads and they’re sinking, completely encased in thrashing water. 

The screeching lurch of metal has Louis’ teeth grating together. They roll as they’re pulled under. Water fills his nose, stings his eyes. He has to fight to keep his mouth closed. Everything is blurry and dark, and his skin stings from the glass wedged there, muscles aching from how hard he’s trying to kick and free himself from the shell of the truck, to free himself from the momentum of their spinning, brain rattled and skin tingling each time the shriek of metal grates against the rocks on the bottom of the river. 

The truck becomes lodged against a scarred rock, but the water is still pulsing, pulling them, and Louis’ body drifts quickly. He slams against the frame of the windshield and manages to tumble out, skin catching on broken glass before he begins to kick his weak legs, searching for the sunlight on the top of the water. His lungs feel full of both a heavy lead and nothing at all, close to bursting, throat constricting from the pressure of the water and the need for air. 

By the time he finds which way is up the edge of his vision is blurred and dark, and the first breath he takes atop the water is a painful, throat-scratching gasp. He’s tumbling uselessly with the current, disoriented as the world spins around him, blue sky and the flurry of trees. He tries to keep himself afloat, tries to breathe without letting the water past his lips. Daisy breaks the surface a few metres away from him, instantly pulled under again, and Louis kicks to her desperately, kicks and kicks and kicks until he gets a hold of her shirt and is able to tug her upwards, hugging her to his chest to keep her above the water. She’s shaking and immediately collapses against him, legs stopping their kicking, and Louis’ head dips under the water, struggling to hold them both up, to breathe, to fight through the panic that’s trying to slowly shut his body down. 

Behind them, there’s an array of disjointed splashing, and when Louis turns, his entire body goes cold.

The undead are launching themselves into the water after them. 

They sink almost immediately, limbs thrashing as they’re carried with the current, and there’s a rippling group on the bank chasing after them as they float, pacing further ahead, waiting. Louis feels nothing but pure horror as two of them jump in ahead of him and Daisy, and he tries to kick away, to reach the other side of the bank. Niall is ahead of them, and he lets out a startled shout and goes under for a split-second before remerging, kicking away desperately, the sinking body of an undead floating behind him. There’s watery red all around them, and Daisy’s face is almost purple from how hard she’s clamped her mouth closed. She isn’t letting any water in, but she isn’t breathing, either, and they need to get out.

They need to get out _now._

Harry and Leigh-Anne have managed to pull themselves to the bank, and their shoulders are weighed down with bags, with the tarp. It’s pooled with water and tugging them both down, but they manage to tug themselves upwards, throwing the belongings they’ve managed to scramble together up onto the grass. They claw desperately at the edge of the bank, at the long reeds and the dirt and the roots. Leigh-Anne pulls herself out first, Harry just behind her. He rolls onto the edge of the bank as Louis and Daisy float past, and their eyes meet. Harry is ragged, hair in his eyes, covered in cuts and watery blood. He’s up on his feet immediately, chasing their movements as Louis tries to swim towards the bank with the weight of Daisy on his chest, tears beaded in the corners of his eyes from the exertion, melting with the river water.

He can feel the thick, warm-wet of blood on his face, feels it leak in a tear along his jaw when he lurches forward for an exposed, spindly tree root that’s shooting out from the bank. It’s rough and cuts his palms, but he manages to grip it tightly. It’s a split second thing, though, when his body jolts with the force of stopping in the water. Daisy slips from his grasp with a panicked shout, flailing for a moment before she goes under, carried with the current.

“Dais!” Louis calls after her, and he lets go of the root as Leigh-Anne reaches for his shirt, pushes away from the bank and dives towards her, trying to get a grip of her shirt, her arms, anything he can just to make sure she won’t sink beneath the pressure of the water. He misses her the first try, and they float uselessly around each other, reaching for each other. Daisy is crying now, spitting water from her lips in a thick foam, flushed red from her panic, from her exhaustion, the movements of her arms growing weaker until she stops paddling all together and starts to go under. 

“ _Louis!_ ”

The sheer terror in Harry’s voice is unsettling, the sound ripped from his throat. He’s running alongside the bank, white as a sheet, and Louis only has a split-second to even register that Harry has called his name before there are slimy, sticky arms around his neck, pulling him beneath the crushing weight of the water. 

Everything is muffled under the pulse of the river, muffled and dark and someplace distant to the surface, someplace disconnected. He panics, sinks deeper, thrashing uselessly. They roll together, and his leg hits the bottom of the river. He screams through his teeth at the pain of it, the rattling of his bones, crying out in nothing but a flurry of bubbles and breathlessness. Water rushes into his mouth before he can stop it. The undead is scratching at his skin, snapping it’s teeth with mindless ferocity. They tumble once more, and Louis manages to shake it off, digs his fingers into the rotting flesh of its arms and kicks it away, then kicks himself to the surface to come up for air, lungs expanding greedily, so much so that it hurts when he can finally breathe again.

He can taste the river water in his mouth, and his limbs are weak and he’s drifting now, trying desperately to make it to the bank with feeble kicks. It takes him too long to register that Harry is in the water, that he’s got Daisy under his arm and his chin keeps ducking beneath the surging pulse of the river, heaving his body to where Leigh-Anne is following them, toeing the edge of the bank. The undead are giving up on their chase, and they float through the water like soggy, swollen logs, water-clogged and heavy. Louis’ brain feels too big for his skull, feels the way the bodies of the undead look as they drift past in the current. 

Leigh-Anne manages to pull Harry and Daisy up onto the bank as Louis reaches the edge, reaching out for the tree roots and holding on for dear life. Numb. Blinking slowly. The water is pulling at his clothes and rushing around his waist. He can’t get his arms to work, to heave himself upward. He just floats there, breaths ragged, and hangs on until Leigh-Anne’s fingers finally wrap firm around his forearms. 

The moment he’s up onto to the bank, his fingers immediately go down his throat. He coughs up river water and bile, stomach heaving, his entire body shuddering from the exertion and the shock. Wet tendrils of hair sting his eyes, hang like a thick curtain over his face. It hurts to breathe, to move. There’s blood running in rivets down his arms, watery vines of it that leak from all the places the glass caught, tiny nicks and cuts that are deep enough to weep. 

Beside him, Harry’s body is much a reflection of his own. Hands and knees, back heaving, collapsed into himself. He’s wide-eyed and pale and has a broad, shaking hand resting over Daisy’s back. Daisy. Lying motionless on her side. Still. The panic surges so quickly through Louis’ chest he feels as though his ribs may burst.

He lurches towards her with tears swelling hot and too fast in his eyes, and everything is blurry now, damp and salty and so devastating. He gets hold of her, turns her onto her back. All he can hear is his mom, her calm hand on the back of his neck, _everything is going to be okay, everything is going to be okay._ There are cotton balls in his ears. She’s so muffled and far away. She’s gone, he knows she is. He doesn’t know why it hits him to suddenly, the realization of it all, the heavy weight of the sky pushing him into the ground. The grief.

“Daisy,” Louis croaks, shakes her shoulders. He can’t lose her, too. Harry is down on his elbows beside him, watching with his face pressed into his arm, ashen and crying. “Dais, you gotta wake up.” 

There’s a cough, a choked splutter. Daisy twitches, and Louis rolls her back onto her side properly, sobs a sigh into her damp neck as she starts to splutter, river water dribbling over her blue lips. Her entire body is trembling, and she looks so frail like this, with her clothes damp and clinging to her bones. Louis cries silently, kisses her forehead over and over. She’s got a cut on her brow and it’s trickling down her cheek like a rogue tear.

“Hey, Daisy darling,” Harry whispers as he curls closer. She’s whimpering, thin arms slung over her stomach. When Harry lays a gentle hand on her shoulder, she starts to sob. “ _Hey-hey_ , it’s okay, little love. It’s all over. It’s okay. You’re safe, _ssh,_ you’re safe.”

Harry’s voice is nothing more than a feeble wobble, reedy and wrecked, his own cheeks stained with tears and dewy blood, hair stuck to his face. They’re so close like this, cocooning over Daisy’s body protectively. Louis slides his hand up from Daisy’s back, lays it over Harry’s. Harry glances up at him, watery eyed and wrought with an anguish that Louis understands, not with words, with a look. He doesn't need the words. He doesn’t want Harry to say it. Instead, they just lean their heads together, Louis’ temple against Harry’s chin, and they huddle that way, Daisy curled into the grass, curled into the dampness of Harry’s chest. 

_Thank you_ , Louis whispers, barely a sound between them. _Thank you, thank you, thank you_. Harry just nudges him gently, brushes his thumb over the side of Louis’ hand. 

“ _Louis_ ,” Leigh-Anne calls. She sounds tremulous. Slowly, Louis raises his head, looks over Harry’s shoulder to where Leigh-Anne is crouched further down the river, tears streaming. 

Niall.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, your feedback is greatly appreciated and really helps motivate me to finish this thing. feel free to come say hey on tumblr too! ♡


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He wants to feel safe and happy and like he isn’t broken; he wants to have a home._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiya, sorry this is a little late. things are hectic right now.
> 
> hope u like this one ♡

There’s a numbness to everything when they pick themselves up off the ground, Daisy curled up and cradled in Harry’s arms as they tread across the grass carefully. The closer they get, the further Louis’ throat closes up on itself, until it feels as though he’s choking, as though his lungs are full of river water and he’s stuck under the mud at the bottom. Niall is sprawled on his back, pale and ashen, washed this sickly unnatural grey. His eyes are unfocused, hazy as he stares down at his arm. Louis follows his gaze, and his heart drops so quickly it feels like a punch to his stomach.

The gash there is gaping, weeping, and for a terrifying, horrible moment Louis thinks it’s a bite, that the greyness to Niall’s skin is the start of infection, that he’s one of the unlucky ones, the ones that can turn straight away, that take just hours to be slurring and peeling and fading into nothing but rotten bones. It’s a sick relief when he’s close enough to see that it’s just a cut, but it doesn’t last, gets replaced with another sickly fear, because the wound is deep, stretching from the sinew of Niall’s wrist up to the inside of his elbow, and there’s so much blood, his fingers dripping with it. 

The spacey, unsettled glaze over Niall’s face is one that Louis never wanted to see again, not since that night in California. Niall’s never done well with blood, with gore and death and horror, and the unwelcome nature of those memories right now are enough to cave in Louis’ chest. Niall had been trembling in the corner, had passed out after smashing in the head of a rotten body, after seeing the way Zayn had bled– 

There’s bile in Louis’ throat when he drops to Niall’s side.

“God,” he breathes, and his hands hover over him, shaking, because he doesn’t know what to _do_. 

Across the river, the hoard of the undead are still jumping uselessly after them in a slow trickle. They get swept up in the water immediately, slack arms flailing as they garble and sink. It’s so unsettling, their jerky stillness, the gaping, staring eyes, the way they lift their heads and peer beady and blank right at them. When Louis turns back, Harry has ripped at a damp sheet, wrapped it desperately around Niall’s arm. The cream fabric is already starting to soak red. Niall’s chest is shaking now, and he hasn’t lifted his eyes from the wound, won’t respond to Leigh-Anne, doesn't even register the soft thread of her fingers in his hair. 

Louis looks at the things strewn around them. A few bags. The tarp. Two bottles of water. Tears spring up into his eyes as he pulls Daisy carefully into his neck. She rests her face there, breathes in his skin, and her fingers wring tight into the sopping weight of his shirt. Her breathes are shuddery and she’s crying, she’s got her eyes screwed up tight, her knuckles intermittently pushing into Louis’ stomach like she’s trying to distract herself from her own queasiness. 

“Ni,” Louis whispers, and Niall finally flicks his eyes up, misty and overwhelmed and afraid. Leigh-Anne gently extracts a piece of glass from his arm and his mouth screws up into a sticken, tiny scream, one that he tries to muffle by clamping his teeth together, legs kicking out. There’s too much going on in Louis’ head, the devastation of this, the fact that they’re trapped here now, that they’re going to run out of food and water within the next few days, that there’s no realistic way they can make it past this point.

Harry’s in a mess of silent tears when Louis finally looks at him, his arms crossed tight over his stomach as he watches the river water flow. All their things will be sunken in mud now, drifting uselessly in the water for someone else to discover and find when this is all over. They’re fossils, relics of the dead world, and that might be what brings Louis the most anguish, the fact that he doesn’t want to be forgotten but the idea of being remembered and clumped together with all the other tragic casualties feels the same as never even existing at all. 

He wonders if the books survived, if Daisy has any clothes, if anything personal to them from the house got scooped up in those bags or if they’ve finally succumbed to the same fate as Indiana did, finally laid to rest and destroyed. He thinks of Harry in the stuffy bedroom light, of those torn, soft pages and the broken seal of the envelope, the little scratches in his notebook, the way he cries now, almost like a second mourning.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Niall spits, body writhing as Leigh-Anne gently pries away the glass. Louis has barely even registered that his own arms are bleeding, that his shirt is stained with it, that his arm and leg are aching. The pain is starting to creep in now. Daisy wipes shakily at her own forehead, and her face curdles at the dark, sticky blood on her pale hands.

“Can you move them?” Harry chokes out, finally tearing his eyes away from the water with a ragged breath. “Can you move your fingers?”

Niall nods slowly, wiggles his fingers like they weigh a tonne each. Slow, stuttered. He still doesn’t look present, looks lost in his own head. 

They’re all shuddering and huddled in a damp puddle together. Leigh-Anne keeps repeating _fuck_ over and over again under her breath and everything sounds underwater but Louis can still hear the gurgle of the undead, the way he’s heard them in his half-formed dreams and as a phantom sound every night, never going away. He can hear them thrashing and snarling violently when they hit the water, when it starts to carry them and pull them under and they can’t fight against it, and it sounds violent, it sounds like they’re trapped, stuck, fingers holding them down and they’re trying to escape– 

Louis falls onto his side and vomits again, pushes Daisy out of his grasp and heaves up bile and sobs and tries to hide his angry, pained tears. Everything sounds wet, the undead and his vomiting and the river lapping against the bank. A warm palm settles on his back, rubs softly, and when Louis glances up Harry is there, dripping hair in his own misty eyes. He pulls Louis up slowly, brings him into his ribs. Louis doesn’t pull away from the contact, now. Harry is so warm despite the cold ruin around them and it makes Louis want to sob.

He looks around them again, at all their sodden things. Harry has grabbed a bag of their clothes, a bag of food, two others that Leigh-Anne had resting in a soggy mess. Soggy and damp and ruined, and Louis freezes, feels his entire body run cold as he digs his hand into the wet pocket of his shorts. The matchbox is limp and fraying and wilted, and for a frozen moment he just stares down at it, feels Harry’s nose brush his temple, feels the warm rise of his chest. 

And then Louis cries. Cradles this tiny cardboard thing in trembling palms and cups it as close as he can to his chest, like maybe if he presses hard enough it’ll spring back to life, it’ll stay there and revert back and maybe things might be okay, all the now blurring, inky lines will disappear, all the marks he scratched in will mend, and this feels like a death, he thinks, it feels like a part of him is gone. And maybe that’s it, the last little piece of things he’s clung so close too finally ruined, finally soggy and sodden and now it’s time for it to rot away, to be fully gone. 

Niall has drifted onto his side, his free arm thrown over his eyes. His throat clicks with each swallow and fills the wretched silence between them, acts as a distraction from the buzz of _What do we do? What now? What are we going to do? What if? What if? What if?_ But there’s nowhere to place the question, no one to give an answer. Louis just tries to breathe, tries to synchronize his own ribs with the feeling of Harry’s expanding against his body. He tries not to let his chest collapse when he presses the thin matchbox closer, hangs his head because the weight of his failures feel too great, the weight of guilt and missing the people he loves and naively wanting things to go back to the way they were.

He wants to be back home in Indiana and he wants to go to Florida in the summer with his sisters and his mom, he wants Christmas dinners and the lace curtains and the way the warm sun filled the living room at the start of spring. He wants to feel safe and happy and like he isn’t broken; he wants to have a home. He wants his friends back and he wants his family to be alive and he wants to go back and fix the mistakes he made. 

The sky is all mellow yellows and blues when the sun starts to set. Light falls down through the tall trees, paints them in dappled, dark shadows, and they remain still and silent and shaking for so long, for too long. Louis closes his eyes against the distant rumble that approaches, against the tinnitus buzz of a plane drawing closer. Daisy’s head is cradled in Louis’ lap, and Harry hasn’t moved, still has Louis in his arms. They all look up in unison when the jet becomes visible overhead, tilting in a low, menacing circle before it stretches outward and disappears behind the treeline. 

Louis looks away, refuses the trace the contrails, hands still buzzing with the vibrations of it.

“We need to move,” Leigh-Anne says softly, and she sits up, brings Niall with her. The sound of the jet presses in again. “We need to move, now.”

It’s a slow process. Louis’ entire body aches, muscles weak from the exertion of being in the water, from the lack of food, and in their wet clothes their movements are uncomfortable and slow. He and Harry support each other as they stagger through the trees, Daisy tucked up against Louis’ ribs and biting anxiously at her fingers. The silence is oppressive without the stutter of the truck engine, without the wind. In the trees they’re protected from the outside noise and everything around them is amplified instead, the crackling of branches and the rustle of barely there animals. 

Daisy lets out a soft breath into Louis’ side, wobbly, fat tears on her cheeks. “I wish Zayn was here.”

She whispers it like a secret, like she didn’t want Louis to hear. Louis almost wishes he hadn’t. 

He glances over his shoulder, cheek brushing Harry’s forearm, and looks to where there are still undead lingering by the edge of the bank in the distance, their rotting bodies drifting listlessly back and forth, watching.

“So do I, Dais,” Louis confesses, pulling Daisy closer. “So do I.”

-

“What did you want to be? When you grew up, I mean.”

The night was balmy and breezy and the beach was dry and whispering softly. Louis tilted his head to the side, let it rest against his shoulder. Under his back the sand was cool and soft, grains tickling the spaces between his fingers. Zayn’s eyes were trained upward, watching the sky.

“An actor, I think,” Louis said. He doesn’t know why he couldn’t look away. Zayn smelt like smoke and the cramped heat of their room, familiar sweat and green sharpie pens. “I always liked being loud, playing the class clown. I don’t know.”

“That’d suit you,” Zayn said, hands spread over his stomach, thumbing absently at the fraying, flimsy edge of his shirt. He glanced over. “You’ve got a good personality for it, too. Not just, like, being loud. You’re quiet in a good way.”

“Thanks,” Louis said after a beat, fingers curling in the sand with a stutter. “What about you?”

Zayn’s head lolled back upright, staring towards the inky darkness, the places the wispy clouds broke apart to reveal the cracked goo of starlight. “An astronaut.”

Louis’ lip quirked. “Original.”

“I know,” Zayn said, and his lips jumped too, fiddling with his shirt again. “I always wanted to go to space.”

There was just an inch of space between their bodies. Lying side by side like that in the sand, Louis could almost imagine the soft grains giving way, felt his breath stutter in his chest when Zayn shifted and the movement of his body sent a soft flurry of mist spraying over Louis’ spread fingers. Things between them had become magnetized, gravitational, and maybe it was the waves crashing on the shore, the tide and the moonlight that bathed them blue, but Louis felt so drawn in, then, felt like if he curled close enough their bodies might merge.

“I used to read about it all the time,” Zayn continued softly when Louis remained silent, staring upward, lashes fanned out. “My baba had these old Bollywood tapes and I remember that I accidentally taped the moon landing over half of one when it was showing on TV. I watched that tape until I wore it out and went all fuzzy.”

“Was he mad, that you taped over it?” Louis said, biting down on his smile the same way Zayn was, soft laughter bubbling from his chest.

“So fucking mad,” Zayn said, a breathless exhale coupled with a laugh, eyes shiny. “He used to buy me those old National Geographic magazines and I pulled them to bits and stuck everything on my walls, had those glow in the dark stars shaped like Orion over my bed. I used to dream about what it would be like, being up there.”

“I wonder what Earth would look like,” Louis said softly, staring up into the dark. The last part of that sentence was left unsaid between them. _What would Earth look like now that it’s fallen apart?_  

“I’ll build you a spaceship out of scrap metal,” Zayn said, and when Louis tilted his head he found that Zayn was already watching him back, their noses only centimetres apart. “We’ll float around up there until things are good again. Watch the planet spin around and enjoy the quiet of it.”

Louis remained silent for so long because he couldn’t think of anything that would be enough, veins running hot and cold and rushing straight into his chest until all that stuttered between them was a breath, a quiet _okay_ that felt like a promise, like what Zayn had really said was _I’ll keep you safe_ and Louis had responded the same in turn, their fingers brushing until they became tangled, the two of them lying there in the sand with the ocean ahead of them and the world up in flames behind them. 

They weren’t in a safe place but Louis somehow felt safe with Zayn, he felt safe when he rolled over from a shallow nap in the mornings and Daisy and Zayn would be sprawled on their stomachs, hands stained with bright marker, waiting for Louis and Leigh-Anne to wake so they could walk down to get their rations for the day. It made Louis rest easier, knowing that if he was under the thick swell of a dream Zayn had Daisy cradled close and comfortable, and Louis was so grateful for that, too, that she had somebody new, somebody who cared about her and indulged her and brushed her hair into messy buns and ponytails with thin, gentle fingers. 

Louis never trusted anyone the way he came to trust Zayn, the family they made with Leigh-Anne, with Niall when he came in across the hall and won Daisy’s heart in mere seconds, fiercely protective and warm and scarred from the trip down he faced from Montana. Before, Louis had found nothing but isolation in groups, nothing but the fear of being hurt by people he was supposed to trust not to hurt him, and he had been that person, too, in those times he only has vague recollections of now when Daisy was frail and skeleton-like and he just couldn’t let her starve. 

But there, in that tiny room in that fucked up city, trapped in from all sides and just a breath away from facing death, the illusion of safety nearly felt real. They could pretend that there was nothing outside that daydream bubble.

Sometimes it couldn’t be ignored.

“Have you ever wondered,” Zayn said one night, clouds hanging low and extinguishing the moon, so dark only the shine of their eyes could be seen, only the dull foam on the waves, “what they did to us?”

He brushed his thumb over the inside of his wrist, touched Louis’ too, a soft scrape of skin. It made Louis’ skin prickle with goosebumps, made it feel like his veins were shifting and reacting like they’d been caught out, shying away. 

“I don’t like to think about it,” Louis whispered back, eyes closed when Zayn brushed his skin again. The more he did think about it, the more ill he tended to feel, this tangled knot forming low in his stomach. 

“It’s fucked up,” Zayn breathed, swallowing. Louis just listened to the rise and fall of their breaths together, until their inhales and exhales lined up. 

He barely remembers the needle, just remembers the sting of the injection and feeling a little fuzzy and then no different, but whenever he thinks about it his vision tends to shift, skin crawling like a raw nerve when he thinks about the chemicals in his body. If they’re strong enough to fight off the virus, thinking about what else they’re doing in his bloodstream makes bile climb up into his throat. And even then, the injection isn’t enough. Whatever they did still isn’t enough but Louis doesn’t think he could ever go near a needle again, not until teeth stop gnashing and bodies stop waking from the dead.

“It’s fucked up,” Zayn repeated, firmer this time, laced with this quiet anger. “We’re all stuck here just fucking _waiting_ for things to go wrong, waiting for the generators to blow themselves to shit and for the food to run out and for those things to break through the barriers, and they’re all just lounging on the fucking east coast waiting for it to blow over, like there aren’t millions, _billions_ of people dead.”

“Z,” Louis whispered, holding his hand and holding his breath when Zayn squeezed his fingers, eyes so shiny. 

“Why is it that there are people who just get a free pass in all this shit?” Zayn said. “People that are lucky enough not to get their bodies pumped with fuck-knows what to stop something that’s probably just as worse working its way in, because they’re already immune to it? It isn’t fair. It’s not fucking _fair._ They should be taking care of us, of all the kids that haven’t got fucking homes anymore because they dropped bombs on them all and blew them to pieces. They’re trying to fucking _cull_ us, weeding out the bad blood–”

“Zayn,” Louis said sharply, both their chests heaving. Zayn blinked at him, and all at once the anger melted away, melted into something broken and afraid.

“You ever feel so alone that you could just die?” Zayn whispered, and Louis had to pull him in then, had to tuck him up into his neck to muffle the way he cried softly, fingers curling in the sand, in Louis’ shirt as he whispered _I’m sorry_ over and over again, wet, shaky breaths hitting Louis’ skin. 

“It’s okay,” Louis hushed. He felt half frozen, not present in his own body, and it might have been fear and the shock of Zayn breaking like that, witty, sharp Zayn with his slow smirks and his matchbox and dark humour, Zayn with his calm eyes and his sugar-tooth smile and the comics stuffed beneath the mattress. It wasn’t okay, but Zayn nodded, huffed another wet breath into Louis’ neck before he pulled away to wipe at his eyes, sticky flush coating his cheeks even in the dark, warmth radiating from them. 

“Promise me,” Zayn said fiercely. “Promise you’ll never let me turn.”

“ _Don’t._ ” Louis shoved him weakly, pulled him back in immediately because his hand was still cupped around the back of Zayn’s neck. “Don’t say shit like that.”

“Louis, please,” he said desperately. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t want to–”

“I don’t want to hurt _you_ ,” Louis said, breath catching on a sob of his own because he didn’t want to think about it, couldn’t. 

“But I won’t _be_ me,” Zayn argued.

Stillness settled around them. Down the beach the waves crashed into the shore, dug up sand and sucked it back out into the sea. They just stared at each other, chests both heaving, eyes wet.

“Yeah,” Louis finally breathed, nodding as he pulled Zayn back in close, let their foreheads touch. He closed his eyes. “As long as you promise me the same. That you’ll be there for Daisy if anything happens to me.” 

He felt Zayn’s fingers shift in the sand, trailing up to find Louis’ own, cradled there between their chests. Louis kept his eyes closed and just focused on the feeling, Zayn’s breaths on his chin, hair brushing his forehead. The delicate curl of their pinkies hooking together.

“Promise.”

-

Darkness swallows them with twisted alacrity. 

Soon, the gold dew of sunset sweat turns silver, the tilt of tree shadows crawling after them in thin spindles until they fold themselves into the ground and turn everything ebony. They walk until they can’t anymore, until Louis’ knees are shaking and his calves feel full of lead. Daisy is on his back, sticky hair tickling his cheeks, and he just can’t hold her up any longer. A few steps ahead, Harry carries their things on his arms, slung over his shoulders, a palm on Niall’s back, Leigh-Anne holding him up as they stumble through the thick trees. With each step dead branches crack under their feet.

“Stop,” Louis rasps, closing his eyes for a moment. “Let’s stop.”

There’s no unanimous agreeance or uproar, just the thud of their things being dropped, the sway of their bodies as they sink down to the cool ground and huddle in together, blinking tiredly with laboured breaths. Niall tilts slowly onto his side and closes his eyes. The sheet tied around his arm is blushing red, and he winces when Harry gently unties it and tears off a new piece, the wound gone sticky-wet around the edges. The blood stains Harry’s fingertips and it makes Louis’ stomach lurch watching them.

Their clothes are still drenched and even with the warmth of the day lingering, Daisy shakes with tiny tremors when she curls up in Louis’ lap, skin littered with goosebumps. Her shirt clings to her ribs, hair tangled with knots. She hasn’t said a word since they got pulled out of the water.

The silence that settles is terrifying. When they had the truck, there was the seclusion of being inside, being behind the doors, and even out in the open there was still that barrier, still the feeling of cool metal at night. Now it’s just them and the dry earth, every movement they make possibly their last, the snap of a twig or the rustle of fallen leaves echoing into the stillness. 

They’ve got their guns and a few bags of shit and each other. That’s it.

“What do we do?” Leigh-Anne finally whispers, arms curled over her stomach. She’s looking down at Niall, whose laboured breaths float up between them all. Louis feels helpless. 

“Pray we make it through tonight,” Louis swallows and runs his fingers through Niall’s hair softly. “Pray we find shelter tomorrow. A town. A hospital that hasn’t been completely looted.”

“And if we don’t?” Leigh-Anne says.

Louis looks away and bites his lips into his mouth. Beside him, Harry kneels silently, fingers wrung together, face still ashen. He looks far away, lost in his own head, short hair falling over his brows. He hasn’t said a word, either. 

“We’ll work it out,” Louis says quietly, tasting the lie between his teeth. He wants to spit it out. 

There’s no point even trying to close his eyes, but he tries to relax himself for Daisy’s sake, her head pillowed on his lap, Harry’s damp sweater pulled from one of their bags and tucked around her shoulders, big enough to cover her whole torso and most of her thighs. She’s a ragdoll against him, all hollowed eyes and ratty hair, and Louis can’t help it when he runs a soft thumb over her fragile brow. In sleep she looks like a toddler again, all lax and quiet, Louis’ miniature bestfriends, her and Phoebe. _Triplets with an age gap_ , that’s what mom used to say about them and the mischief he led them in to. 

He misses them all so fucking much.

The trunks are so tall that the endless blackness of the sky looks close enough to touch, like it’s balancing on the treetops, like he could reach up with both hands and grab a star between his fingers, rearrange the constellations and put their names up there so they can’t be forgotten, their own Orion and Cassiopeia and Lyra. It’s a sticky, suffocating treacle and it presses him down into the ground. Swallowing, he closes his heavy eyes just for a moment and breathes in. Everything aches and feels numb all at once. He’s almost tempted to jump back into the river just to pretend it’ll quench the thirst gripping at his dry throat. He can still hear it in the distance, the wet lap of it on it’s bank, the quiet hush of it’s peaks, _hush-hush-hush_ like waves breaking on a beach.

Louis’ stomach twists. He curls carefully onto his side, careful not to wake Daisy. She presses her face into his stomach and barely misses a breath. 

Harry is still awake, sitting a few metres across the lumpy ground, cross-legged and unmoving as he watches Niall’s chest stutter up and down. There’s a shiny film glazing his eyes. Things are still for so long, for what could be hours, just their breaths and Daisy’s intelligible whispers as her eyelids flutter. Harry doesn’t move. He blinks heavily, pulls at the grass in a way that makes Louis’ own fingers twitch, the repetitive, absent movement of it, like Harry doesn’t even realize that come morning the red on his hands will be stained murky green, too. 

Then, like flicking a switch, he stands and disappears silently into the trees.

Louis watches the retreat of his back, frozen, before he sits up and moves to follow. He pauses when Leigh-Anne catches his eyes, feeling caught out and strange with his heart knocking against his chest, but then she nods at him, pulls Daisy in with soft hands until they’re cradled together. 

It’s hard to navigate in the dark. He trips on three logs, stomach lurching with each clumsy footfall, and he has to pause to breathe, to listen and make sure the echo of his own footsteps isn’t another clambering set that’s wading through the night and waiting to sink in it’s teeth. Spindly branches catch on his shirt, skirt over his arms like fingernails, and he’s so caught up in his own head, in the sensation of the skin on the back of his neck crawling, that he almost misses Harry.

He’s crouched against a tree, body sagged over with his knees curled up to his chest, head buried there. His shoulders shake with minute little ticks, stuttered whimpers he muffles with his arms. Louis approaches him slowly, teeth clenched together at the soft sound of him crying. 

“Hey,” Louis whispers, resting a gentle hand on Harry’s shoulder. Harry whirls immediately, puffy eyes gone huge and frightened, shiny with moonlight and fear. Louis flinches, too, both of them frozen for a moment before Harry releases a shaky little breath and places a calming hand over his heart, closing his eyes.

“Sorry,” Louis murmurs awkwardly, trying not to watch as Harry brushes away the fat tears that droop along his chin. “I guess we’re even, now.”

Harry doesn’t laugh, but he doesn’t turn away, either. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have gone off alone.”

“It’s fine,” Louis scratches at his jaw, the skin there itching from his beard starting to grow back out, untrimmed for so long. His movements are full of caution when he lowers himself down to the ground. Harry is still crying even though it looks like he’s trying not to, pearly tears slipping from the corners of his eyes each time he blinks. He wipes at them hurriedly and ducks his head. 

They don’t speak for the longest time. Harry has a vice grip on his wrist, arms looped around his knees. He keeps sniffling quietly and wiping his cheeks against his shoulders, gaze averted. Louis flicks between watching the side of his face and looking up to try and blink the threat of his own misty tears away. It’s so quiet here. Louis closes his eyes and listens to Harry breathe, long and measured at first, like he’s trying to keep himself calm. It starts to speed up though, goes shuddery and soft, and when Louis looks over again Harry has a palm over his eyes, squeezing at the skin of his temples as he starts to cry again, bowing forward.

“Harry,” Louis says, hand half frozen between them, softly bewildered. 

“I’m sorry,” Harry whispers, stricken and broken. He swallows wetly. “I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Louis leans forward to try and catch his eye, to desperately try and understand. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

Harry lets out a sob, one he clamps down on so quickly it becomes choked, a wet hiccup. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

Louis rests a hesitant hand over Harry’s back. He breaks, trembles under the touch, and Louis just rubs silently, presses his thumb gently between Harry’s shoulder blades and wills away the heat gathering behind his own eyes. Harry’s tears flow thick, shine his cheeks and dot his chin, and it sounds like loss, like mourning, like things gone wrong.

“I feel it too,” Louis whispers, squeezing Harry’s shoulder softly, because he thinks he understands. He digs into his pocket, pulls out the crumpled matchbox and tosses it onto the ground between them. Harry glances up at him from under his hair, palm pressed up against his forehead. “I get it.”

“I miss them so much,” Harry chokes, face crumpled. His breaths are wheezy and almost panicked now, like it’s all flooding him at once. “I thought it was supposed to get easier, but it just hasn’t.”

Louis brings his palm to the back of Harry’s neck and pushes his fingers into the hair there. “It will. It’ll get better.”

Harry shakes his head and looks at Louis like he’s translucent, like he could see right through that lie before it even left Louis’ mouth. “The shit we’ve been through, all the regrets we have. The things we’ve done,” his voice cracks, eyes clenched shut. “I don’t want it to haunt me forever. I want it all to just go away.”

“Not all of it,” Louis says softly. “Not the good things.”

“I’m starting to forget all of that, though,” Harry says, and he presses his palm back harshly against his forehead, face screwed up. “All those pictures and the pages and all that sentimental shit I had, it’s just gone. It’s gone and now I have to try and remember. I have to try and separate the bad things and the good things but they’re all mixed together and I don’t want to think about getting even a glimpse of all the worst parts.”

Louis just stares and lets Harry speak, because his chest is heaving and his whole body is shaking and this feels like something that’s been trapped inside and unspoken for so long, and Harry’s trusting Louis enough now to let it go between them. Louis doesn’t dare move, just listens and runs his fingers through Harry’s hair and tries not to reach out to brush away his tears for him.

“I’ve forgotten what her voice sounds like,” Harry cries, a quiet anguish, a heartbreak. “I’ve forgotten her fucking voice but I can still see the moment I killed her and I fucking hate it. Everything else is blurry but I can still see it and hear it and dream about it and I hate it. I _hate it._ ”

“ _Ssh_ ,” Louis soothes, but it gets caught somewhere in his throat, somewhere sickly and numb.

“I wish it was me,” Harry says miserably, both palms hiding his face, hiding himself away from the world. “It should have been me.”

“Please don’t say that,” Louis says. The first fumble of tears droop before he can stop them.

“It’s true,” Harry sniffs, finally facing Louis, forehead resting against his palms. “Gemma was so good. She was _good–_ ”

“Listen to me,” Louis shakes him gently and pulls him closer. Their foreheads knock. “You didn’t kill her, Harry. The virus did. And that thing, the thing that ate her from the inside, that became her, that wasn’t _her_. It _wasn’t_.”

Harry shakes his head over and over, bottom lip bitten painfully between his teeth.

“It wasn’t her,” Louis breathes between them, frantic, almost like he’s trying to convince himself, the same way he’s tried to convince himself for what feels like months. “It wasn’t her, Harry.”

“It was, though,” Harry sobs, and he looks at Louis like he knows. “I hurt her. I ruined her.”

“Stop it,” Louis cries, and this is so much, now, both of them crying together, mourning together, the matchbox wilted and desolate between their feet, that world inside an envelope buried beneath the mud at the bottom of the river. Louis cups Harry’s neck on both sides, slides his fingers up to his jaw, his wet cheeks. It’s surging up over him. “You did the right thing. You had to protect yourself and it’s okay. It’s _okay_.” 

“It doesn’t feel okay,” Harry says. His hands find Louis’ elbows; blood-stained fingers slide up to his wrists. The contact is dizzying, being this close to someone, and Louis feels faint, feels exhausted and overwhelmed. “I don’t know how it’s ever going to feel okay. I–. I killed somebody. People are dead because of the things I did to keep myself alive, and that’s selfish and it’s wrong but I still _did_ it–”

“We don’t have a choice anymore,” Louis says desperately. Harry’s cheeks are hot under his palms. “There’s no right or wrong when it comes to this. There’s only staying alive or being dead, Harry. And right now you’re here and you’re breathing and that has to count for something. It _has_ to.”

They stare at each other, half-gasping through their breaths and their tears, and Louis feels just a word away from his own breakdown, from spilling everything between them because he’s so tired, he’s so fucking tired, and even those words only sound half-true to his own ears because he can’t make sense of them himself, he can’t make sense of some of the things he’s done and that’s just it. That’s just it, isn’t it? That in this world nothing makes sense and they’ve been left to deal with the repercussions of that, left to deal with nothing feeling right and everything feeling wrong and the fact that somewhere along the way those two variables have come to mean the same thing on this fucked up spectrum. 

“Louis,” Harry says, a fumble between their mouths. He looks so distressed, eyes so desperate and full. In the distance, there’s a series of dull _cracks_. “There’s something that I–”

“ _Sh_ ,” Louis claps a hand over Harry’s mouth, both of them freezing. There’s more rustling, another succession of snapping twigs. It sounds so close. Louis is struggling to hold his breath, everything in his body still shaking, tears sticky on his cheeks. They huddle together there silently in the dark, listening for that low gurgle, for the unsettling chitter. Another crack, another rustle. 

Silence.

Neither of them move for so long, even after the sounds stop and it’s just their breaths again. It takes Louis too long to realize that he still has his hand resting gently over Harry’s mouth, that he can feel the hot puff of his breaths against his palm, can feel the wet shine of his lips and his jaw, his pointer fingers and thumb catching the intermittent tears still rolling down from Harry’s wide eyes.

They finally look at each other again. Harry seems dazed as Louis slowly pulls his hand away, from both his mouth and his hair. His lips are parted slightly, soft. Louis swallows wetly and flicks his eyes away.

“Sorry,” he whispers. “I didn’t mean to–. Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Harry whispers back, voice is wrecked from his crying. Their gazes catch again. Louis’ entire neck feels flushed, hands shaking from the adrenaline that’s fading away, being replaced by the reality of the conversation they’ve just had. Of what Harry’s just told him. 

“You’re brave,” Louis says. Harry looks away and closes his eyes. “You make Daisy laugh. You saved our lives, Harry. You’re a good person.”

“But–”

“Hey.” Louis squeezes his wrist gently, attempts a wobbly, teary smile. “Accept the compliment, huh? No need to be all humble.”

Harry’s own smile is watery, too, waning and turning tight as he sniffs, inhales a long breath. “Thank you.”

“There you go,” Louis breathes. He strokes his thumb over the bone of Harry’s wrist once, then lifts his hand away. “Okay?”

_No_ , Harry’s eyes say.

_Me either,_ Louis knocks their shoulders gently and wipes at his cheeks.

Harry stretches his legs out in front of him slowly, links his fingers together on his lap. “We should head back.”

“Right,” Louis breathes. He feels around for the matchbox, scoops it up with delicate fingers and rubs his thumb along the side. 

“Was that his?” Harry asks softly.

Louis’ lips twist. He just nods, and Harry nods, too, squeezes Louis’ arm and rises, helps him up. They’re both shaky, muscles still achy and weak as they tread through the fallen branches. When they break through the trees Leigh-Anne is still awake, stroking her hands through Daisy’s hair gently. She glances up at them both, gives them a tired smile, and shakes Daisy awake gently.

“Wha–” she hums, half-formed on a yawn, curling in closer to Leigh-Anne’s chest.

“Hey, little mushroom,” Harry whispers, dropping down beside her. She scrunches her nose lightly at the name. “You feeling okay?”

“Wanna sleep,” she complains. Louis smiles lightly and sits beside Niall, places a calming hand over his forehead and brushes his sticky hair back. He’s deep in sleep, whole body lax. Warm. Calm. Okay, for now.

“Here, Dais,” Harry whispers. He reaches for where his sweater has slipped off her back, but when he tucks it around her shoulders she turns to look at him, kisses Leigh-Anne’s cheek, and then crawls towards Harry. It’s a slow, careful thing, the way she wraps her arms around his waist and presses her face to his chest.

“Sleep,” she mutters, tapping lightly at Harry’s shoulder. “You’re warm.”

Louis watches them get comfortable together, the way Harry cocoons her with his arms, tucks his sweater around her body so just her head and her calves peek out from the fabric, his hand stretched comforting and protective over her back while he hums a familiar song low in his chest. Her breaths go steady soon after, as do Harry’s, the thumb that’s rubbing up and down along Daisy’s shoulder blade gradually going still.

Louis stays awake, watches the clammy sweat gather on Niall’s forehead, and wonders how they’re going to get through this.

-

The sky feels too calm, shaded that dull peach-apricot colour, clouds dusted with fuzz swooped in tiny clusters like crumbling sugar cubes. At dawn, the light had fluttered down through the canopy in pale beams, and when Louis looked up it felt like staring through a camera lens that had shifted too far into the sun, dazed with sunspots and streaks of orange until he blinked and sat up and the woods around him became clear and melancholy pink, the undertones of the trees ebbing like flesh where the light hit, nothing like the deep darkness that settled the night before.

As they trail along the side of the road now, their shoes full of tiny rocks and strips of crumbly bark, Louis watches the clouds shift and spread and tries to stop himself searching for hidden contrails amongst the pale colours. 

Under his toes there’s a buzz, a fluttered pulse that makes him pause and look over his shoulder every so often, like what he’s feeling is a flurry of footsteps trailing after them. Like the undead have decomposed and sunk beneath the ground to wait for them. Like they’re matching Louis toe-for-toe in an upside down world, following his exact movements and holding on for the right moment to burst their yellow-boned fingers through the soil and grab his ankles. 

Daisy would be safe from that, at least, perched on Harry’s back with her hair bunched up into a scraggly ponytail. There are tiny cuts along the backs of her calves and arms, dewy and dried over where the soft light hits. Louis follows the line of her legs, to where her dusty, destroyed shoes are half-slipping off the back of her feet, splitting open, and then down again, to Harry’s legs, the mirrored scrapes and bumps he has just like Daisy, that thick fleshy scar that stretches pink over his calf. 

Much like their walk from the truck to the trees in Arizona, walking along the open road like this feels somehow exactly the same despite the thick trees around them. When they walked amongst the plateaus there was nowhere for them to hide, nowhere for them to crouch and pray and wait. Toeing the edge of the worn down tar, all the hiding places they should have seem obsolete enough that they may as well be tumbling through that red dirt again. Each time Louis’ tired eyes shift amongst the trees, he mistakes the dry blue-grey bark of a thin trunk for a decaying body. There’s no way to tell what’s waiting for them in the shadows. 

Early mornings on a dead planet always feel the most liminal. Louis used to think it was the night time, when sunset casts deep irons and coppers over everything, when it goes purple like a bruise and breaths are held until it goes entirely dark, like for those few hours the stillness and the shapes on the horizon might be a portal to somewhere new, a different time and place. But the mornings, the mornings are what makes him feel the stillness the most. The sun wakes with a wobbly yawn and spreads gentle, careful light, almost a nudge to say _it’s time, it’s time, it’s time to go_.

And then there’s no answer where the answers should be. Morning was always the busy time, cars on the road and the rattle of the train picking up the first still-sleepy commuters making their way to their jobs. Steam from coffee machines and little bells above a bakery door, the sizzle of telephone wires and the morning radio with the traffic report. Quiet business. Mankind waking up with the planet in the most natural way. 

Now all Louis has is their footsteps. Morning says _it’s time, it’s time, it’s time to go_ , but there’s nowhere to go now. Morning says _wake up, wake up, wake up_ and is met with reluctance, with cries, with the sadness of opening one's eyes and knowing there’s another day that must be faced. Morning murmurs a feeble _where did everybody go?_ and the question echoes back unto itself.

Louis adjusts the bag cutting into his shoulder, huffs a soft breath, and lowers his eyes from the hazy sky. 

Ahead, Leigh-Anne struggles to keep Niall steady. Their pace is slow, all of Niall’s weight slumped down, his feet dragging. His skin has never seemed so pale, all blue veins and grime, and Louis has to keep looking away, has to keep adjusting the bags he has slung over his arms and his shoulders to give himself something else to do, watches Daisy fall in and out of sleep with her face tucked into the back of Harry’s neck, watches his hands cradle her legs and the way he gently nudges their heads together when he whispers to her every so often to check that she’s alright.  

They haven’t spoken about the night before. Harry woke in slow blinks, bleary against the soft sun, and when he looked over at Louis he cast his lashes low immediately, shifting like he was embarrassed, caught out, jaw twitching. It was a flicker, this chest-heavy glance of _I told you things and you told me things and this feels different now_ that passed through both of them. Louis’ fingers feel numb and he still can’t figure out what possessed him to hold Harry like that, why Harry let him, why things seemed to collapse so quickly and Louis was fervent with this need to be desperate and determined with the words he let go. 

Words familiar and foreign all at once, that to his mind now feel like something he was trying to convince himself more of than he was Harry, because Harry had known, hadn’t he? Seen through Louis like he didn’t even exist. And that was the other thing, the other side to the silver edged sword of a gaze they shared this morning. Even through all their tension, their mistrust and hostility and cautiousness with each other, there’s been something palpable between them, a knowing and an understanding that hasn’t found itself in words until now. 

That might be why Louis feels both frozen down to his toes and flushed with heat, feels about ready to succumb to the morning sun and say _take me, take me, take me far away_. Because maybe he and Harry aren’t so different, really. Maybe all it takes is a look and a touch and the exhaustion of finally allowing a slither of something real to pass between them. Maybe that’s what death does, feeds off the misery it leaves behind until the bones of the bodies still living with it are left to turn to each other.

Louis’ so lost in his own thoughts when Niall stops walking, bringing them to a standstill, that he almost runs into Harry’s back. 

“Hey,” Leigh-Anne whispers to Niall as she ducks forward, trying to meet his eye. “You okay?”

Niall doesn’t respond. All Louis can see is the back of his head, his dirty hair and the thin, pale skin of his neck. Drowsy, dazed, Niall collapses like a slow trickle, like a thick bead of blood rolling down the spine, his knees buckling as he lowers himself down in a half-stumble. Leigh-Anne is there immediately to catch him and ease the fall.

Louis rushes over, brushes past Harry to drop down onto the ground. “Ni, _hey, hey,_ ” he breathes, a hand under Niall’s chin to lift his head. His eyes are bloodshot and half-closed, all the colour drained from his ashen cheeks. “You’re alright, yeah? Look at me. You’re alright.”

Niall shakes his head and refuses to meet Louis’ gaze. Behind them, Louis hears the sound of Daisy wriggling from Harry’s grip, hears her soft feet. Her shadow falls over them, and when Louis looks up his stomach drops because this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. He doesn’t want her to see this. Daisy watches on with wide eyes, her lips pulled back into her mouth like she doesn’t believe what she’s looking down at, like she doesn’t want to believe it, couldn’t possibly believe it. Not Niall. Not the man that swung her down the hall and threw her through foamy waves, the man that did accents to make her laugh instead of cry and always gave her half his rations when she was hungry and homesick. 

Here, dappled in the slats of light that burst through the shadows of the bodies around him, Niall looks fragile and weak, slowly sinking further into himself. His breaths are heavy. When Louis and Leigh-Anne’s eyes meet over Niall’s shaky shoulders, her eyes are shiny. 

Niall mumbles something to the ground.

“What?” Louis says. He rubs his thumb over Niall’s cheek, tries to get him to look up.

“I said,” Niall swallows with a wet click, wiping at his sweaty under eyes with a dirty palm, “you can’t let me slow you down.” 

It takes a moment to settle, what he’s just said.

Leigh-Anne inhale sharply. “You don’t know us at all if you think we’d leave you here,” she says fiercely. Tears shine her eyes. “We’re not fucking leaving you here.”

“I can hardly stand,” Niall argues weakly. “What are you going to do? What if they come for us again–”

“I’ll carry you on my back,” Leigh-Anne bursts. “I’ll–. I’ll fucking drag you along behind me, if that’s what it takes. It doesn’t matter.”

“It does,” Niall says. The words fall like a glum sigh. Like he’s already given up.

“Ni,” Louis whispers. “We’re not leaving you behind.”

Niall sobs a breath, hanging his head. “Please,” he says, and Louis’ stomach lurches, the fact that he’s asking like this. Asking to be left. “I’m not going to make it all that way.”

“Yes, you will,” Louis says, fierce when he lifts Niall’s chin again. Their eyes do meet this time, Niall’s shiny and anguished, Louis’ pleading. “You’re not backing out now, you fuck. Not after everything we’ve been through.”

Niall’s laugh is snotty and broken, but there’s no smile to match the sound, nothing but sadness when his eyes cast over Louis’ shoulder. “Dais.”

Behind them, Daisy watches on with trembling fingers. Harry has a gentle hand on her shoulder, but she shrugs it off when their eyes turn to her, blinks between Louis and Niall for a moment before she breaks away from them, stomping towards the trees with her arms crossed tight over her chest. 

Like a string is tied between them, Louis’ chest tugs sharply, a spike of fear, of worry. He takes off after her before Harry can even think to make the move to, leaves and dry dirt spraying under his feet as he ducks into the trees.

“Daisy!” he calls, biting down on the need to let it be louder, to edge it with frustration because she _can’t_ run off like this. 

He catches her with a firm hand around her arm, pulling her to an abrupt stop. They’re only just within the lip of the forest, patterns of yellow light shining down soft over them. It’s silent save for their laboured breaths and the crackle of dry leaves under their shifting feet. Daisy keeps her back to him. Defiant. Stubborn. The lines of her shoulders are tense and curling up to her ears and Louis braces himself for the snarl that he knows is already curling around her mouth when she whips towards him. 

“It’s not fair,” she says. It sounds too rough and broken to come from her.

“I know,” Louis says softly. He gentles himself, rubs his thumb over her arm and tries to pull her closer, into his arms where he knows he can try his best to keep her safe. She doesn’t budge. 

“It’s not fair,” she repeats, chest stuttering. 

“Dais.” Louis closes his eyes briefly. “Everything is going to be–”

“It’s not _okay!_ ” Daisy yells, throwing her arms out wide. Her voice seems to echo up through the trees. “Stop telling me everything's okay because it’s _not_. It’s _not_ okay and it’s hurting me!”

Louis balks. It takes a moment for Daisy to collect herself, to breathe in, twin pears sliding down her dirty cheeks as she flicks her eyes away. She’s flushed, bottom lip trembling no matter how much she tries to stop it. Louis can see the frustration curled in her fingers, in the tightness of her sharp collar bones. 

Morning is breathless as it watches on. 

“I’m sorry,” Louis says quietly. 

“I hate when you say it’s okay,” Daisy whispers, her face crumpling. “It’s a lie. How am I ever supposed to move on from things if you lie?”

“Dais–”

“I know I’m your sister, and I know I’m a kid,” Daisy says. She looks up at him, hurt. The next words are a breath, a tremble. “But you don’t have to treat me like one.”

“Come here,” Louis’s voice falls like an exhale, a half-formed sob as he pulls her into his chest and wraps her up completely, cradles her head and holds her close so she can feel his heart. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I love you, okay? I love you so, _so_ much.”

Her sobs are quiet and muffled, soaking through his thin shirt. The way she twists it between her fingers reminds Louis of when she was tiny, when it was bedtime and she’d latch on to him on the couch and say _i don’t wanna_ until he tickled her to make her let go. Now, he pulls her in tighter and hopes she never does, rests his cheek atop her head and closes his eyes and tries to make this better.

“I’m sorry if I ever made you feel like that.” Louis presses a soft kiss to her head. “I just want to protect you so much, Dais. You’re my girl and you’re everything to me and I’ve been trying to hard to make you happy but I need to look past what I need and focus on you, and I’m sorry if I lost sight of that. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Daisy sniffs, fingers curling tighter. 

“Hey.” Louis squeezes her. “So you get a free pass on that and I don’t?”

“Shut _up_ ,” she mutters, and he can practically see her eye roll, feels her cheeks squish when she smiles. 

They go quiet, and Louis blinks up, tries to blink away the heat pushing at his eyes.

“Mom used to say that to me, before you were born,” he whispers. Daisy pulls back a little to look at him. “That was her way of reassuring me when things went wrong, if I was upset or if I needed help.”

“Really?” Daisy says. Her eyes are misty, little pearls forming on her inner corners. 

“Yeah,” Louis says softly. He tucks Daisy’s hair behind her ear gently, smiling a little at the memory of it now, of mom with her hands on his cheeks. “Maybe that’s why I say it now, but. Mom always wanted to protect us, Dais, and she wanted us to protect each other more than anything. I don’t mean to lie, and I don’t mean to hurt you. I just want to make you feel safe, but I think I mixed it up somewhere, too. Keeping you safe isn’t just telling you that it’s okay. It’s being honest, and treating you properly, and making sure you really are okay before I tell you that you will be.”

Daisy hugs him so tightly his breath thumps in his chest. 

“You do take care of me,” she murmurs. “You take the best care of me. I didn’t mean to make you think you don’t.”

Louis kisses her head again and just holds her, lets the silence wrap them up for a moment so he can try to think, to breathe against the pressure of the hand that’s squeezing his heart, knocking it’s knuckles all over his ribs. It shouldn’t take this to make him see his mistakes. It shouldn’t take this to make him realize he’s been hurting her.

“I can hear you thinking.” Daisy zaps his side, and he squirms. When she looks up at him again her nose is scrunched, face all tear stained, but her eyes are a little brighter.

“I love you,” Louis tells hers. “With my whole heart.” 

“Love you, too,” Daisy says. She pokes him again and they scuffle for a moment, laughing gently. It doesn’t last, though. Gradually, the tiny smile on her mouth dims, eyes lowering to her feet, then over Louis’ shoulder. 

When they shuffle out of the trees and up the small incline to the road, fingers held tight together, Harry is crouched in front of a still stooped Niall and tying off a new strip of sheet, what looks to be their last. Their eyes meet for a moment, but Louis can’t decipher what Harry’s trying to say, and he doesn’t think Harry knows either. Both of them are too caught up right now, too many things going on to even pinpoint what the shine in Harry’s eyes is for.

Daisy drops his fingers gently and crouches in front of Niall. She pulls him into a soft hug, and it looks so feeble and delicate, her body curled up to fit all the places where he can’t sit up to meet her. With Niall’s forehead against her shoulder and a shaky hand over her back, Louis wishes he had the words to make this all better. Daisy whispers something so quiet, and Niall nods once after a beat, holding her tight.

Then she pulls back, brushes away her tears and the few that are threatening to spill down Niall’s cheeks. Beside them, Leigh-Anne is silent, her own cheeks dewy, knees curled up to her chest as she watches. Daisy holds out her hand, and Niall takes it slowly, stands even slower, resting his weight on Daisy’s shoulder while he adjusts.

“Let’s go,” he says softly. “Before I fucking keel over again.”

-

Harry finally speaks what feels like only a half hour later. 

He’s lingering beside Louis, having dropped back once Daisy linked her fingers with Niall’s, the two of them walking ahead. Niall has all his weight supported by Leigh-Anne, and it’s slow-going, his feet dragging in odd stumbles. Louis tries not to watch too closely. It’s making him feel nauseous.

Their knuckles brush when Harry falls into step beside him. Louis refuses to read it as anything other than accidental.

“Is she okay?” Harry says softly, nodding his head towards Daisy. 

Louis fights the urge to laugh bitterly at the word choice. “She’s fine. Just overwhelmed.”

Harry nods and goes quiet, flicks a nervous glance over his shoulder. Morning has finally settled, the day heating up, and the sunlight reflects back off the dark tar and into their eyes. Louis doesn’t even know if they’re heading in the right direction, if they’re heading towards anything at all. He still feels too disorientated and exhausted to do anything other than place one foot after the other and hope for the best. 

Their hands bump again.

“Listen,” Harry says, eyes on his toes. “Um. About last night…” 

Louis glances over at him, pulse spiking. He was more than ready to sweep it all under the rug and pretend to forget about it, but then Harry meets his gaze and he knows there’s no getting out of this strange conversation they need to have. That maybe Harry knows Louis wants to ignore it, the way he tends to ignore everything else. Like maybe Harry might actually know better, and Louis is secretly thankful for that. 

“I’m sorry if I…” Harry looks away while he searches for the words. He lets out a puff of breath, eyes back on his toes. “I don’t really know what I’m saying. I feel like I just dropped everything on you but I just hadn’t–. I haven’t told anyone that before.”

He’s speaking so softly, gnawing at his bottom lip and scuffing his toes as they walk and Louis’ chest constricts with it, ribs expanding like a balloon that’s stretched too far and gone translucent and taut. 

“Please say something,” Harry whispers, and when he lifts his eyes again, they’re damp. _Please tell me I’m not a monster for the things I’ve done_. 

“You don’t need to apologize to me,” Louis finally says. His voice comes out quiet and strange. “I know there are some things you feel like you can never say out loud, but it’s worse if you say nothing at all. You don’t have to keep it in. If you need me to listen, I will.”

_You’re a hypocrite_ , Louis thinks to himself, stomach churning as Harry blinks tears away. 

“It’s not that easy,” Harry says.

“I know,” Louis says, without missing a beat. Harry’s always so quick to see through him, so fast that it’s slightly terrifying. Their fingers touch, and Harry lingers with it, almost like an _I’m here, don’t lie to make it seem okay, be honest with me_. 

“You can talk to me, too, you know,” Harry says carefully. Louis refuses to look at him. “You’re not alone in this.” 

The way they skirt around what they’re really trying to say to each other makes Louis’ bones ache. He knows that Harry can see through his cracked exterior, that he’s trying to pry his thin fingers in to find the same hurt he holds, scoop it out and cradle it between their chests just to prove a point. It’s so terrifying, though, Harry looking at Louis and just knowing, looking at him and _begging_ him to bury his mind into the things he doesn’t want to touch. 

Louis doesn’t respond. When their fingers brush again, he twitches away and just breathes, keeps his eyes ahead of them and attempts to blink through the foggy weight that’s settling in his temples. Harry lumbers silently beside him, his own gaze trained skyward, to the trees and their surroundings. The silence feels thick and Louis almost wants to lean into it for a moment, let it collapse until they’re whispering and filling up all that space with things unspoken. 

They’re all sweaty and slow by the time the trees start to thin, the crumbling road winding and opening up into a small clearing, the silhouettes and shapes of buildings becoming visible through the treeline. It’s quiet and seems ghostly, the closer they get. The telltale signs of desertion are here, the cars half pulled out of their driveways, smashed windows and nondescript junk strewn out on the tiny nature strips, clogging cracked pavement. Heavy silence. 

It’s half of a city that once was, and as they linger by the trees, Louis’ heart leaps into his throat at the sight of a hospital in the distance, grimy walls and white light reflecting off the dirty windows where the sun hits. Niall’s sitting down against a trunk now, eyes closed as his throat works to swallow, dry and audible. There’s so much sweat shining his face, beaded along his top lip and under his eyes. He’s paper thin and fragile and Louis is desperate for him to be alright. 

Leigh-Anne crouches beside him and gently brushes his hair from his eyes, then glances up at Louis.

“I’ll go,” she says.

“No.” Louis shakes his head. “No, you’re staying here.”

Leigh-Anne sighs. “Louis–”

“I trust you,” Louis says, looking to Daisy, who’s leant her body weight against the trunk beside Niall, toying with her bottom lip. “I know you can keep them safe while I go.”

“Don’t be an asshole,” Leigh-Anne says. “There’s no way in hell you’re going in there by yourself.”

Harry, who’s been completely silent, looks at his toes when Louis and Leigh-Anne both glance at him. He scratches at the crease of his arm. Swallows thickly. 

“I…” he trails off and flicks his gaze up to the buildings in the distance. Louis watches the discomfort that wraps around his posture, the tick of his jaw. Harry closes his eyes for a moment, breathes slowly. “I don’t think I should.”

Louis blinks at him, a little taken aback. He still hasn’t looked up, staring at his toes again.

“Then we all go,” Leigh-Anne says. “Nobody’s going anywhere by themselves. That’s not how this works.” 

Louis’ bones are achy from the weight of carrying their things, and the little city they’ve found themselves in is hazy and dusty despite the way the concrete unfolds and builds up. It’s stifling, all the pressure squeezing them in a vice grip. Niall sighs and lets his head loll back.

“I don’t know if I can go that far,” he says quietly. His gaze isn’t centred on anything, dragging lazily into open space. 

They’re wasting too much time. A dull pulse is starting to knock against Louis’ temples, a ghostly _tick-tick-tick_ that never seems to go away, amplified now, getting louder with each passing moment. They don’t have the spare seconds or the energy to waste arguing about this.

“Harry and I are going,” Louis says, and he holds out his shotgun for Leigh-Anne to take, three shots left. She takes it reluctantly and slides it onto her shoulder. “You three find shelter in one of the smaller buildings and hide there. We won’t be long. Okay?”

The last word is a shaky breath, this sudden rush of blood going to his head and then back down his body. There are no sudden shouts of disagreeance, just a tense pause in which they all look at each other in quiet understanding. There’s no easy way to go about this, there’s never an easy way, and Louis is too exhausted to try and find a solution that doesn’t exist. They just have to push through now, the same way they have been. They have to try. 

Daisy clings to he and Harry both for what feels like forever. Louis had expected her to put up a fight, to cling and try to force them to stay, but Leigh-Anne slides a comforting hand into her hair and something like acceptance and understanding passes over her delicate face, mixing with the fear there. Louis whispers _love you_ in her ear and pinches her hip to make her squirm a little, ruffles at her hair, because if he doesn’t come back – a thought that turns his chest icy – he wants her to have this at least, a pocket of love and ease amongst the strain of everything else. 

It all feels mechanical, once they start to organize themselves. Gather together and check through one of the first little buildings they come across, a three story, lifeless set of offices, full of smashed glass and toppled desks but not much of anything else. He and Harry only take one gun, two shots left, and leave the other two behind. When they step back out into the sunlight again, there’s a palpable tension that runs electric between them, and they pause to glance at each other before they set off.

Louis doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to get used to walking through empty cities. There’s something about it that just doesn’t feel right. No bustle, no engines, no footsteps or phone calls or signs of life. Just dull greys and whites. There are a few stray cars littered, but none that they pass are usable, some smashed through shopfronts, mounted on curbs and bent around telephone poles. In some cities, its the stationary, parked vehicles that send the most unease down Louis’ spine, the ones that look like they haven’t been touched at all, completely normal, like they’re idle and waiting for things to return to they way they once were. 

Harry’s picking at the skin of his fingers anxiously, and in the heavy silence Louis can hear it, the muted _tick-tick_ of him tugging at the loose pieces by his thumb and forefinger. It’s making Louis’ neck prickle but he keeps his teeth locked together and restrains from saying anything, from breaking the fragile quiet. All the heat is trapped down amongst the tar with them and Louis just focuses on that, on breathing and trying to quell the swirling pit that’s forming in his stomach with each step they take towards the slanting shadow of the hospital in the distance. 

As they cross the deserted parking lot, Louis can’t help but feel so immensely small in the scale of things. There are no cars and the sky is so huge and open, clouds drawn away with morning’s retreat, a steady blue screen. Louis is almost compelled to pause, to sit between the white lines and wait for sunset to come so they can see it all go peach and purple and have juvenile a hope that the streetlights might flicker on, too. 

The automatic doors at the buildings front are smashed, the glass splintered and jagged. They’ll make too much noise trying to pry their way through, so they skirt carefully around to the back of the building instead, sneaking slowly through the fences. It smells putrid, huge steel bins lined up that obviously haven’t been emptied, the gutters clogged with dead leaves and muck. There’s a fire escape door between two of the bins. Louis pauses and takes in a deep breath, then presses his ear slowly to the wood, eyes on the ground as he listens.

It’s a terrifying thought, that the door could suddenly be wrenched open, rotting hands reaching for him, and just like that it would be over, a split second. There’s a heavy stillness, though, as time stretches on. Harry fiddles with the strap of the shotgun, pushes his thumb into his shoulder, and when their eyes finally meet Louis can see the dull sweat on Harry’s neck, the paleness of his face. He looks petrified.

“Ready?” Louis whispers. They have to be quiet. 

Quick. Careful. 

Harry nods.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just an fyi, i might not be updating again for a little while. uni is super busy right now and i'm trying to focus on studying, but i'll be back with an update soon!!
> 
> as always, your comments are super appreciated so please feel free to leave me some feedback
> 
> big love ♡


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